Page 34 - Plastics News October 2016

FEATURES
How Much Can We Recycle?
Changes in the waste stream have a major impact on our ability to meet recycling goals.
The Olympics recently finished in Rio. It was a showcase
of some of the top feats in athletics. And achieving
those feats takes a lot of preparation.
When athletes are training, their coaches set goals to
measure their progress. These goals challenge the athletes
and spur them on to see how much they can achieve.
Setting those goals is important. They need to be based on
the athlete’s ability and the performance that is needed
to win a gold medal.
Athletes with the right mix of skills and training discipline
are more likely to succeed if their goals are well defined
and achievable. Goals that set too low of a bar will not
lead to a gold medal performance, and goals that are set
unrealistically high lead to failure or cheating.
Recycling is no different.
Goals give recycling
programs targets
to attain, and they
measure progress and
define high-performing
programs. Athletes have
a major advantage over recycling programs when it comes
to goals because theirs are set by experienced coaches.
Recycling goals are set by politicians based on what is
politically palatable.
As a result, recycling goals vary widely among the 50
states. They range from a low of 10 percent to a high of
75 percent. These goals have two things in common: All
of them can be divided by five and none of them were set
with any thought as to what is realistically achievable.
Clearly, states that set low recycling goals are more
likely to have low performing programs. However, while
aggressive goals can lead to high performing programs,
they can also lead to aggressive reporting by local
governments desperate to show to their citizens that they
are meeting the challenge.
When politicians set aggressive recycling goals, they forget
about the complexity of the waste stream and of waste
generators. I suspect most of them are thinking primarily
of packaging and paper and don’t give much thought to the
rest of the waste stream, yet packaging is only about 30
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Chaz Miller
percent of the waste stream. Printed paper is less than 10
percent, and all the other paper products are less than 5
percent. Even if we could collect and recycle every single
package and paper product, we would only be recycling a
little more than 40 percent of the waste we make.
What else is left? Aside from food and yard waste, which
are a bit less than 30 percent of the waste stream, the
other 40 percent of our trash is “durable” and “non-
durable” products. Durable products are defined by the
Environmental Protection Agency as those with a lifetime
of three years or more, and non-durables are used up more
quickly. Products such as appliances and furniture are
durables, while printed paper, plastic and paper utensils
and clothing are non-durables. Our ability to recycle this
vast array of products varies widely, yet when it comes to
recycling goals, those differences don’t matter.
Moreover, we’ve seen tremendous changes in the waste
stream over the last 15 years. These changes—less paper,
lighter weight packaging, etc.—have a major impact on
our ability to meet recycling goals, yet most politicians are
blissfully unaware of their impact when they set those goals.
Where these recyclables are generated is another blissfully
ignored factor. We have succeeded in creating a social
norm for recycling in “detached” single family housing.
We do less well in rural and more urban settings, and we
have failed to establish a social norm for recycling in multi-
family housing. About 17 percent of the population lives
in the latter. And don’t forget that a considerable chunk
of our recyclables is generated at businesses.
I’m not saying we should do without recycling goals
because I understand their value. But I am saying we need
a far more sensible approach to those goals and to how
we measure progress in achieving them.
Let’s be like those Olympic athletes—or at least the ones
that don’t cheat—and strive to be faster, higher and
stronger. But let’s also be like them and have smart goals.
And if you want to know what I think they are, tune in
next month.
Chaz Miller is the Director of Policy and Advocacy at the National
Waste & Recycling Association headquartered in Washington, D.C.