Recycling

By Adi Varshneya, Zero Waste Communities Coordinator, GAIA US & Canada

What’s wrong with America Recycles Day? 

“America Recycles Day” and its host organization, Keep America Beautiful both have nice-sounding names, but that’s part of the problem. While the organization Keep America Beautiful seems like a friendly non-profit, in reality it is an industry-sponsored group that lends public credibility to corporate interests. According to investigations including a recent exposé in The Intercept, packaging and beverage industries formed Keep America Beautiful in the 1950s to stop fledgling regulations on single-use disposables from spreading. 

Through a series of ad campaigns spread out over decades —including the infamous “Crying Indian” commercial, which uses racist tropes about indigenous peoples to co-opt centuries of indigenous environmental stewardship and land struggles — the organization built a narrative around “litter” that diverts responsibility the growing plastic pollution problem away from corporations and onto individual consumers. America Recycles Day is an extension of this industry greenwashing. Keep America Beautiful’s corporate partners currently include some of the world’s top plastic polluters, including Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Nestle. Several of these have lobbied against much-needed waste reduction solutions, such as bottle deposit legislation and bans on single-use disposables. In positioning recycling as the ultimate solution to our waste problem, corporate producers have meticulously evaded responsibility for the waste they create by claiming their products are “recyclable.” 

So Keep America Beautiful is a little dodgy… but recycling is still a good thing, right? 

Even with the best available recycling technology, the maximum recycling level for the current mix of plastics produced be somewhere between 36% and 53%. Municipalities are burdened with the massive, costly task of collecting, sorting, and processing recycled waste. Our recycling systems aren’t equipped to deal with the staggering volume of plastic waste produced in this country.

Much of this discarded plastic waste, including multi-layered plastics (such as potato chip bags), are extremely difficult and costly to recycle. Since they can’t, in a practical sense, be recycled, they end up in landfills, incinerators, and the environment. Domestic end markets for recycled materials are lacking, partly because the shale fracking boom makes virgin plastic extremely cheap: Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Nestle only use 9%, 3%, and 2% recycled content in their products, respectively. We’ve only recycled 9% of all the plastics ever produced, while plastic production is expected to quadruple by 2050. Recycling is simply not enough. 

So should we even bother with recycling? 

Recycling is not enough, but that doesn’t mean we should forget about recycling altogether. We need to work with municipalities and mission-based recyclers to improve our recycling systems. Real recycling requires universal access to recycling and composting services, as well as the education, outreach, and incentives to help people separate their waste correctly. Policymakers should also require producers to use minimum recycled content, which would be one of many initiatives required to boost local economies by building domestic markets for recycled materials.

We also need to make sure risky burn technologies promoted by some of Keep America Beautiful’s sponsors such as “chemical recycling” (usually meaning plastic-to-fuel) aren’t sold to cities as sustainable waste management strategies. “If it doesn’t protect our health and the environment and prevent the need for more resource extraction, it’s not recycling”, according to the Alliance of Mission Based Recyclers. 

If recycling isn’t enough, what is? 

Recycling is just one piece of a much larger puzzle that must include upstream solutions to reduce the amount of waste produced in the first place. Communities and businesses across the world are working with local governments to get their municipalities on the road towards zero waste: they’re supporting initiatives around reuse and refill, organizing around product redesign, implementing bans on single-use disposables, improving collection services, and much more. Visit zerowasteworld.org to find stories and case studies about these powerful, placed-based zero waste solutions that are supporting both environmental and social goals. Corporations need to play their part, too.

They’ve profited by externalizing the costs of their waste onto our communities and environment  for too long — it’s time to force them to take real, measurable actions towards reducing their waste and sustainably managing the end life of their products. Keep America Beautiful’s stated mission of inspiring and educating “people to take action every day to improve and beautify their community environment” is best exemplified by the global movement of sanitation workers, small businesses, sustainability departments, and community-based organizations working to Break Free From Plastic and build holistic solutions towards zero waste.

Media contacts:
Rachele Huennekens, GAIA and Partnership for Working Families, 703-470-2454; 703-470-2454, rachele.huennekens@gmail.com
David Isaacson, National Council on Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH) 773-593.2741 david@rkcommunications.net

New Report: U.S. Recycling Workers Exposed to Safety Hazards and High Injury Rates, But Cities Can Protect the Workers Who Protect the Planet

17 Recent Fatalities; Injured at Twice the Rate as the Average Worker

Note to editors and reporters: Study embargoed until Tuesday, June 23; Media contacts can provide advance copy

[BERKELEY, CA:] A new study, to be released Tuesday, June 23 by environmental, occupational safety, and community benefits experts in collaboration with researchers at the University of Illinois School of Public Health, finds that recycling work is unnecessarily hazardous to workers’ health and safety. Seventeen American recycling workers died on the job from 2011 to 2013. Recycling workers are more than twice as likely to be injured at work as the average worker.

By ensuring health and safety compliance across the industry, the study’s authors say cities can create good and safe recycling jobs, and they offer concrete policy recommendations for cities.

“Recycling is the right thing to do, but we have to do it the right way,” said Mary Vogel, executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health. “That means educating and empowering recycling workers, and using proven prevention strategies which we know will reduce exposure to hazardous conditions. That’s how we can avoid tragedies like the death of a recycling worker just last week in Florida.”

Key findings from the report, Safe & Sustainable Recycling: Protecting Workers who Protect the Planet, include:

  • The industry’s high injury and fatality rates are a result of unsafe working conditions around heavy machinery and exposure to hazardous items on the sort line, like hypodermic needles, toxic chemicals, and animal carcasses.
  • Many waste and recycling companies rely heavily on temporary workers, who have fewer workplace protections and are less likely to be informed of their legal right to a safe and healthy workplace.

“People put dangerous stuff in recycling bins,” said Mirna Santizo, who worked at a Casella recycling facility for 12 years, sorting recycling from Boston and other cities. “We found lots of broken glass and needles. Sometimes workers were punctured and hurt from the needles.”

“If we are serious about solving the world’s ecological crises, we need to invest in protecting the lives and livelihoods of workers whose daily efforts are reducing pollution, conserving precious resources, and mitigating climate change,” said Monica Wilson of GAIA, a contributor to the report.

To create good and safe recycling jobs, the authors recommend:

  • City governments evaluate the health and safety records of recycling companies and require these companies to have comprehensive worker safety programs,
  • The recycling industry ends the use of temporary workers, and
  • Cities enact strong community education programs for greater household separation of waste to minimize dangerous contaminants entering the recycling stream.

The report notes that unionized workers, with negotiated contracts in place enjoy more effective enforcement of legally mandated health and safety protections and also have the ability to bargain for additional safeguards to improve working conditions.

“Many cities have figured out how to collect recycling in ways that help our environment, and create good, safe jobs. It’s time to extend that approach to every city, and to every step of the recycling chain, starting with recycling sorting facilities,” said Hays Witt with the Partnership for Working Families, a report contributor.

Since this report went to press, a Florida man was crushed to death on June 15, 2015 in a cardboard compactor while working at a recycling plant in Winter Garden, outside of Orlando.

“Safe and Sustainable Recycling” is being released today with events in 10 cities. The report notes important economic and climate benefits from expanding recycling nationally, including climate benefits equivalent to shutting down one-fifth of U.S. coal power plants and sustaining a total of 2.3 million jobs. That is more than 10 times the number of jobs than sending the same material to garbage incinerators and landfills.

 “Safe and Sustainable Recycling” is released by:
GAIA a worldwide alliance of more than 800 grassroots groups, non-governmental organizations, and individuals in over 90 countries whose ultimate vision is a just, toxic-free world without incineration. no-burn.org

Partnership for Working Families is a national network of leading regional advocacy organizations. Together we are a voice for working families, promoting policies that create quality jobs and thriving, healthy communities. forworkingfamilies.org

National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH): National COSH links the efforts of local worker health and safety coalitions in communities across the United States, advocating for elimination of preventable hazards in the workplace. coshnetwork.org.

Authors include experts including at the University of Illinois, Chicago Hospital and Health Sciences System and Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health (MassCOSH).

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Originally published in the Huffington Post a few months ago, this introduction to the zero waste case studies in GAIA’s On the Road to Zero Waste: Successes and Lessons from Around the World contains some crucial ideas about moving beyond recycling.

Zero waste is both a goal and a plan of action. The goal is to protect and recover scarce natural resources by ending waste disposal in incinerators, dumps, and landfills. The plan encompasses waste reduction, composting, recycling and reuse, changes in consumption habits, and industrial redesign. The premise is that if a product cannot be reused, composted, or recycled, it just should not be produced in the first place.

Just as importantly, zero waste is a revolution in the relationship between waste and people. It is a new way of thinking about safeguarding the health and improving the lives of everyone who produces, handles, works with, or is affected by waste — in other words, all of us.

Zero waste strategies help societies to produce and consume goods while respecting ecological limits and the rights of communities. The strategies ensure that all discarded materials are safely and sustainably returned to nature or to manufacturing in place of raw materials. In a zero waste approach, waste management is not left only to politicians and technical experts; rather, everyone impacted — from residents of wealthy neighborhoods to the public, private, and informal sector workers who handle waste — has a voice.

Practicing zero waste means moving toward a world in which all materials are used to their utmost potential, in a system that simultaneously prioritizes the needs of workers, communities, and the environment. It is much like establishing zero defect goals for manufacturing, or zero injury goals in the workplace.

Zero waste is ambitious, but it is not impossible. Nor is it part of some far-off future. Today, in small towns and big cities, in areas rich and poor, in the global North and South, innovative communities are making real progress toward the goal of zero waste. Every community is different, so no two zero waste programs are identical, but the various approaches are together creating something bigger than the sum of their parts: protection of the earth and the natural riches which lie under, on, and over it. Here are a few examples of what is working:

* Through incentives and extensive public outreach, San Francisco has reduced its waste to landfill by 77 percent — the highest diversion rate in the United States — and is on track to reach 90 percent by 2020;

* A door-to-door collection service operated by a cooperative of almost 2,000 grassroots recyclers in Pune, India — now part of the city’s waste management system — diverts enough waste to avoid 640,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually;

* Aggressive standards and incentives for both individuals and businesses in the Flanders region of Belgium have achieved 73 percent diversion of residential waste, the highest regional rate in Europe;

* In Taiwan, community opposition to incineration pushed the government to adopt goals and programs for waste prevention and recycling. The programs were so successful that the quantity of waste decreased significantly, even as the population increased and the economy grew;

* An anti-incinerator movement in the Spanish province of Gipuzkoa led to the adoption of door-to-door waste collection services in several small cities, which have since reduced the amount of waste going to landfills by 80 percent;

* In the Philippines, a participatory, bottom-up approach has proven that communities have the ability to solve their own waste management problems;

* A focus on organics in Mumbai, India and La Pintana, Chile has produced real value from the cities’ largest and most problematic portion of municipal waste;

* In Buenos Aires, Argentina, grassroots recyclers focused on cooperatives and took collective political action. As a result, the city began separating waste at the source, an essential step toward its goal of 75 percent diversion by 2017.

While few locations are bringing together all the elements of a comprehensive zero waste plan, many have in common a philosophy driven by four core strategies:

1. Moving away from waste disposal: Zero waste moves societies away from waste disposal by setting goals and target dates to reduce waste going to landfills, abolishing waste incineration, establishing or raising landfill fees, shifting subsidies away from waste disposal, banning disposable products, and other actions. Government policies that promote these interventions are strongest when they incentivize community participation and incorporate the interests of waste workers.

2. Supporting comprehensive reuse, recycling, and organics treatment programs: Zero waste is about creating a closed cycle for all the materials we use — paper, glass, metals, plastic, and food among them. Such a system operates through separating waste at its source in order to reuse, repair, and recycle inorganic materials, and compost or digest organic materials. Separate organics collection ensures a stream of clean, high-quality material which in turn enables the creation of useful products (compost and biogas) from the largest portion of municipal waste.

3. Engaging communities: Zero waste relies on democracy and strong community action in shaping waste management. A lengthy initial consultation process can pay off with better design and higher participation rates. Residents must actively participate in the programs by consuming sustainably, minimizing waste, separating discards, and composting at home.

A successful zero waste program must also be an inclusive one. Inclusive zero waste systems make sure that resource recovery programs include and respect all those involved in resource conservation, especially informal recyclers whose livelihoods depend on discarded materials. The workers who handle waste should be fully integrated into the design, implementation, and monitoring processes, as they ultimately make the system function. In some communities, where waste workers come from historically excluded populations, this may require ending long-standing discriminatory practices.

4. Designing for the future: Zero waste emphasizes efficient use of resources; safe manufacturing and recycling processes to protect workers; product durability; and design for disassembly, repair, and recycling. Once communities begin to put zero waste practices in place, the residual fraction — that which is left over because it is either too toxic to be safely recycled or is made out of non-recyclable materials — becomes evident, and industrial design mistakes and inefficiencies can be studied and corrected.

Reducing or substituting toxic materials, reducing packaging, and environmentally preferable purchasing are some important strategies.

Each of the communities discussed in these case studies is enjoying significant environmental, climatic, social, economic, and sanitation benefits as a result of its moves to zero waste. Together, the successes offer models we can all build from, regardless of context. Let us all learn what is environmentally possible, and begin turning the possibilities into reality.

This week Other Worlds launches the blog series “Environmental Possibilities: Zero Waste,” featuring new ways of thinking, acting, and shaping government policy. Each week, we highlight a success story in the zero waste movement, excerpted from the report On the Road to Zero Waste: Successes and Lessons from Around the World by the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA). GAIA is a powerful worldwide alliance of more than 650 grassroots groups, non-governmental organizations, and individuals in over 90 countries. Their collective goal is a just, toxic-free world without incineration. Other Worlds is excited to promote the work of GAIA and the organized communities it works with, and hopes that the stories inspire you and others to begin moving your home, town or city, nation, and planet toward zero waste. This introduction to zero waste is the first in a ten-part series on zero waste successes and lessons. The following weeks will feature inspiring stories about zero waste achievements in San Francisco and waste pickers in India, to be followed by additional stories from around the globe.

This introduction to zero waste is the first in a 10-part series on zero waste successes and lessons. Following weeks feature inspiring stories from around the globe. Check back regularly for the latest blogs!

Check out GAIA’s website here and download the full report here.
Read more from Other Worlds here, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Copyleft GAIA. You may reprint this article in whole or in part. Please credit any text or original research you use to GAIA.Follow Beverly Bell on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Other_Worlds

By Cecilia Allen and the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives

The Flemish region of Belgium boasts the highest waste diversion rate in Europe. Almost three-fourths of the residential waste produced in the region is reused, recycled, or composted. Since the first Waste Decree was approved in Flanders in 1981, regional goals (for overall residential waste generation, separate collection, and residual waste after source separation and home composting) have been met and then exceeded, allowing more ambitious goals to be set in subsequentwaste plans that are developed every four to five years. With these successes, the emphasis of waste management policies transitioned from disposal to source separation and recycling, and finally to waste prevention. Per capita waste generation in Flanders has held steady since 2000, showing a rare example of economic growth without increased waste generation.

The Ecolizer Tool. (Photo: OVAM).

The first plan for vegetable, fruit, and garden (VFG) waste, developed between 1991 and 1995, led to the creation of the non-profit Flemish compost organization, VLACO. VLACO encourages organic waste prevention, promotes composting at all levels, certifies compost, and operates as a reference and assistance entity on organic waste materials.

Organic materials are treated through composting and anaerobic digestion. In the beginning, there was one centralized compost plant that received mixed residential waste, but the compost quality was so bad that source separation was made a requirement in the regional plans for organic materials. The second plan for organic materials required separate collection of green waste (produced in public parks and areas as a result of pruning) or VFG waste, and advocated home composting. Subsequent organic materials plans have focused on promoting further home composting and cycle gardening, and encouraging businesses to compost.

By 2010, 35 compost plants in Flanders (8 for VFG waste and 27 for green waste) and 29 anaerobic digestion plants were processing organic residential waste together with manure and agricultural waste. Approximately 4,900 tons of organic materials were composted or treated through anaerobic digestion every day. VLACO estimated the energy savings and reduction in CO2 emissions resulting from compost production, compared to a scenario in which the organics were treated through incineration with energy recovery: in 2007, 480,000 fewer tons of CO2 were emitted due to separate collection and composting of 833,000 tons of organic materials.

The Flemish government mandates source separated collection throughout the region. In order to encourage improvements in separation, it also sets targets for per capita residential waste production, home composting, and maximum residuals, which must be met by all municipalities in the region.

In 1998, landfilling of unsorted waste, separated waste suitable for recovery, combustible waste, and all pharmaceuticals was banned, and incineration of separated recyclables and unsorted waste was also prohibited.In addition to incinerator and landfill restrictions, financial mechanisms are used to discourage burying and burning. There is an environmental tax for residual waste treatment that ranges from $9 per ton for incineration to $95 per ton for landfilling. In 2009, the revenues from these levies totaled $36 million.

One of Flanders’ central strategies to prevent waste goes to the root of the waste problem: the very design of products. To address this, the agency has created a set of tools to promote clean production and sustainable design. These include:

  • “ECOLIZER” – a tool for designers to estimate the environmental impact of products. It includes a set of indicators relating to materials, processing, transport, energy, and waste treatment, allowing designers to identify opportunities to reduce those impacts by changing the design.
  • Eco-efficiency assessment – a program to evaluate the efficiency of small and medium companies. It identifies points of intervention for reducing waste, improving energy and water efficiency, increasing recycling, and so on.  The test is free of charge.
  • Inspirational online database – a collection of case studies of businesses that have implemented clean production and eco-design methods.

In 2008, $1.19 million in subsidies were given to reuse and recycling centers. In 2009, Flanders had over 110 second-hand shops employing a total of 3,861 employees and serving over 3.6 million paying customers. The government also organizes “Ecodesign awards” for students and professionals as a way to encourage innovations in waste prevention. The prizes range between $508 and $5,080.

Flemish waste legislation makes it mandatory for producers, importers, and retailers of certain items to take back waste products and meet collection and recovery targets. These obligations apply to batteries and accumulators, vehicles, printed matter, tires, electrical and electronic equipment, lubricating and industrial oils, lighting equipment, animal and vegetable fats and oils, and medicines. People can return broken or obsolete products to retailers free of charge. Producers are then responsible for management and treatment of the products according to specific requirements that include recovery targets. By law, new construction projects that generate over 1,000 m3 of debris must present a “deconstruction” plan and waste inventory and are responsible for recycling this waste. According to OVAM, 90 percent of construction and demolition waste—11 million tons—was recycled in 2010.

Waste Prevention Strategies Directed at Households and Individuals

Pay As You Throw (PAYT). The hallmark of this significant waste prevention strategy is the application of graduated taxes to different types of waste. Most expensive is the collection of residual waste, followed by the collection of organic materials, with the lowest taxes applied to plastic bottles, metal packaging, and drink cartons. Collection of paper and cardboard, glass bottles, and textiles is free. Tax on bulky waste varies depending on the quantity.

Home composting. Successful approaches to promote composting have included annual charges for the collection of organic materials ($51 for a 120 liter bin), educating citizens about home composting through communication campaigns, promoting “cycle gardening” to reuse yard waste, encouraging composting at schools, and composting demonstrations at community compost plants. An estimated 100,000 tons of organic materials were kept out of the collection and management system in 2008, thanks to home composting. In densely populated areas, the government encourages community compost plants, where citizens can take their organic materials. These facilities usually use compost bins, and so do not take up much space. By 2010, approximately 34 percent of the Flemish population—almost two million people—was composting at home.

Green event assessment and guide. Online tools are available for organizers to calculate the ecological footprint of their events and to prevent waste during events. The agency also maintains an online list of places that lend reusable tableware for events and parties. Additional waste prevention campaigns for citizens include promoting the use of tap water instead of bottled, encouraging bulk purchasing, discouraging the use of packaging and disposable bags, and providing “Please No Publicity” stickers distributed to citizens to reduce junk mail.

Regulating Products That Enter the Market

Although waste management is a local and regional responsibility, the Belgian federal government sets the standards for products that enter the market and eventually become waste. These policies include an Eco-tax Act for items like beverage containers, some packaging, and disposable cameras and batteries; a federal act that discourages producers from manufacturing items that increase waste problems or pose health or pollution risks; the adoption of standard labels for products meeting certain environmental and social criteria; and the publication of a green procurement guide.

Throughout Belgium, packaging is the producer’s responsibility. Nearly all the companies that produce household packaging are grouped in a single organization known as FOST Plus. Each participating company pays a fee based on the type and amount of packaging they are responsible for introducing into the market. The organization funds the public collection, sorting, and recycling of these materials. According to FOST Plus, the recycling rate for household packaging in Belgium has increased from 28 percent in 1995 to 91.5 percent in 2010.

Flanders accounts for 60 percent of the total household packaging recycled in the country (415,763 tons in 2010). FOST Plus estimates that compared to incineration, recycling prevented the emission of 860,000 tons of CO2. A 2006 study estimated that the total cost per inhabitant for the packaging management system in Belgium, accounting for income from recycling sales, was $7.34 per year.

By dividing responsibility appropriately between municipal, regional, and national governments, Flanders has successfully implemented a comprehensive strategy for waste prevention, recycling, and composting. The results speak for themselves: stable waste generation and the highest diversion rate in Europe.

Copyleft GAIA. You may reprint this article in whole or in part.  Please credit any text or original research you use to GAIA.

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