Throwing it all away

EPA Waste Study 2006

The Big Picture on Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) and Where Recycling Fits In

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did its last comprehensive analysis of the trends in solid waste in 2006. Here are some graphics showing trends. In terms of waste, we continue to dispose of massive amounts...251 million short tons of "stuff". It works out to 4.6 pounds per person PER day. Recycling efforts have led to about 82 million tons of waste being diverted from landfill in 2006.

It is interesting to look at the various rates of recycling amongst representative materials and speculate as to why some materials have achieved greater or lesser success in being recycled.

Auto batteries- this is a good example where government, industry and the retail sectors got alignment early and made some tough decisions to deal with the core issue of lead disposal. Now, it's standard operating procedure for consumers and industrial users to exchange their obsolete
batteries for new ones along with payment of a disposal fee (not unlike what's imposed on spent tires). The fact that batteries aren't the most "portable" items also makes it more likely that people will do the right thing and dispose of them properly rather than chuck them into their
garbage cans.

Steel/Aluminum cans- the earliest pioneers in recycling, but both containers suffer from collection convenience these days......which is why various new hybrid schemes for curbside collection are being looked at. Aluminum remains the champion of residual market value amongst all products.

Plastics- also suffering from convenience of collection. Rapidly evolving technologies to re-use PET in usable food grade applications is a good news story here which bodes well for the commercial value of spent PET.

Glass- one of the big struggles for glass is the wholesale lack of commercial value of the recycling material and its difficulty in processing in single stream recylcing streams.

Greg Wittbecker

A shout out to Coke

We attended the National Recycling Coalition Annual Gala on Tuesday, February 12th at which Coca Cola was awarded the National Recycling Coalition's (NRC) Recycling Works award.

The NRC honored Coca-Cola for its assertive and broad approach to environmental sustainability. Coke's Sandy Douglas, in accepting the award has "set the bar" even higher for his company...announcing the following new goal....

Coca-Cola sets aluminum recycling goal
Atlanta Business Chronicle
The Coca-Cola Co is aiming to eventually recycle or reuse 100 percent of the aluminum beverage cans it sells in America. Atlanta-based Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) said the 100-percent goal is a long-term target.

One out of every two aluminum cans is recycled today, Coca-Cola said. Recycling aluminum is efficient and requires 95 percent less energy than creating aluminum from raw materials. It also reduces carbon emissions by 95 percent. Coca-Cola said it uses an average 60 percent recycled aluminum in its beverage cans.

Coca-Cola has previously set a goal to recycle or reuse 100 percent of its PET plastic bottles. In 2007, it spent $60 million in a series of recycling initiatives, including support of RecycleBank's curbside collection program and the construction of the world's largest PET bottle-to-bottle recycling plant in Spartanburg, S.C.

In 2007, Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. created Coca-Cola Recycling LLC to recover and recycle the packaging materials developed and used by the Coca-Cola system.

"We established Coca-Cola Recycling to help increase recycling rates in North America and to ensure that our system has ready access to recycled material," said John Burgess, president and chief operating officer of Coca-Cola Recycling. "By the end of 2008, Coca-Cola Recycling will recycle more than 100 million pounds each of PET and aluminum."

Alcoa applauds Coca-Cola's aggressive approach to recycling. It dovetails with our recent call action to pushing the recycling rate on aluminum beverage cans up to 75% by 2015. This is an ambitious goal, requiring industry, government and the public to join forces to recapture another 400,000 metric tons of aluminum.

This campaign will require us to change behavior and simultaneously make the process much easier than it has been in the past. There are a host of exciting initiatives under way to work on both of these issues.

Posted by Greg Wittbecker

Take it to the curb. Then take it to the bank.

Americans are spoiled with the number of recycling options they have. In most major cities across the land, recycling is as simple as putting stuff in a bin that's separate from the rest of your garbage and hauling it to the curb once a week or so. What could be simpler? Yet according to these guys, only a third of our recyclables get recycled. (It's a little higher with a aluminum cans -- about half -- but still it makes you scratch your head.)

It's a cinch that altruism isn't working.

That's where these guys come in: RecycleBank, one of those bright new startups in Green Business, offers a cool new idea: you get paid to bin your recyclables and haul them to the curb. The American freakin' way!

How does it work? Corporate sponsors like Kraft, Coca-Cola, Petco, CVS, The North Face, Timberland and give you discounts. Real discounts. Like a coupon for $10 off your next bag of groceries, dvd purchase, or pair of (recycled) polypropylene underwear. RecycleBank sends you coupons based on how much you recycle.

Now, I'm sure you're asking, "how do they know?" Here's where it gets cool. If you're one of the lucky folks in a town served by RecycleBank (currently 35 pilot cities in the US Northeast) you get a smart garbage can that weighs your recyclables and ticks them off on your account when the truck pulls up.

This system has diverted 36 million tons of perfectly good, perfectly recyclable stuff from landfills so far, and they're planning to take it nationwide in the coming year.

Now you have no more excuses.

Couldn't have said it better ourselves

We're supposed to be about aluminum cans. But sometimes something really cool comes along and you have to step outside the box.

Apple's gotta-have Macbook Air is getting a lot of press for pushing the idea of what a laptop is supposed to be. So thin, you can mail one in a manila envelope. So light, you won't need a lot of postage.

So, so, so shiny.

Guess where that comes from.

"Among other highlights Tuesday, Jobs cited the fact that the new Macbook Air is clad in a fully recyclable aluminum case and stated that aluminum is one of the most recyclable materials on the market. "

Yeah, the emphasis is added. We're shameless. Read the whole report on the Macbook Air's introduction in WIRED online.

Get a bin and dive right in

Hot off the e-press is the latest edition of Bin Buzz, the monthly news mag of the five-year-old Curbside Value Partnership. If you're not familiar with CVP, it's a great source of support for people trying to promote curbside recycling in their communities.

You'd think that if it's as easy as hauling your recyclables out to the curb along with your other junk, everybody in America would do it, and the good people served by CVP would have nothing to do. Apparently, and unfortunately, not. So -- thank the earth gods for CVP.

To get one, download your own copy right here -- and nose around their web site while you're at it.