Page 60 - Plastics News August 2024
P. 60
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Recycling council emphasizes importance of
supply
The Northeast
Recycling Council
published a “Guide
to Increasing Re-
cycling Supply,” a
resource to help
build up local mate-
rial supply.
ith industry-wide attention on build- a policy guide about supply side strategies to
ing up recycled material end user increase the supply of post-consumer materials
Wdemand, the Northeast Recycling to the marketplace.” The new publication is the
Council is urging materials recovery stakehold- result of that process.
ers not to forget about ensuring there is ade-
quate supply. A majority of the Northeast U.S.-focused guide’s
case studies are government-led strategies to
The organization last week published a “Guide increase supply, but it also highlights efforts
to Increasing Recycling Supply,” a resource for spearheaded by nonprofits, MRF operators and,
stakeholders across the recycling chain. It lays in areas with container deposit systems, re-
out a number of ways different stakeholders demption centers.
have successfully built up local material supply
and covers all traditional municipal recyclables. It points to Prince George’s County’s public
outreach campaign in Maryland, which includ-
In announcing the guide, NERC noted that “sup- ed bilingual communication efforts in high-con-
ply and demand issues are primary components tamination service areas where county officials
to recycling market development.” But the or- theorized a language barrier was hampering
ganization expressed that the industry dialogue proper recycling practices. The case study pro-
has skewed largely in one direction of late. vides several lessons county regulators learned
from the campaign. For instance, when trying to
“For many years, increasing demand for recy- reach non-English speaking residents, recycling
cled materials has taken precedence over sup- staffers had to get creative: “Attending school
ply issues,” NERC wrote. meetings to promote proper recycling did not
necessarily work because non-English speaking
The council in 2023 formed a supply side policy
committee aiming to “explore, discuss, and write residents were not attending the school meet-
ings, hence, the decision was to visit local super-
62 PLASTICS NEWS August 2024
