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2.5 Topic a: Waste reduction

In the past, recycling in North America primarily occurred outside the jurisdiction of waste management officials. Volunteer groups organized neighborhood collection drives for newspapers, bottles, and cans. A well-established network of haulers, brokers, and salvage yards recovered paper and metals from businesses. Today, rising disposal costs, the difficulty of siting landfills and incinerators, and renewed public concern for the environment have made recycling a top priority in North America. For example, Canada set a 50% target for reducing packaging disposal by 2000.

About 20-25% of the solid waste stream in North America is currently recycled, including about 5% that is composted. This compares to under 10% recycling and virtually no centralized composting prior to 1975. More than 8,000 recycling programs are operating in communities in the US alone, spurred on by sweeping legislative activity at all levels of government, especially the local level in the US and the provincial level in Canada. The amounts and types of materials recovered per capita, however, differ dramatically by region, especially based on whether the area is urban, suburban, or rural. The existence of certain public infrastructures for recycling is also a fundamental determinant of recycling levels and the types of material collected.

Waste reduction in North America includes source reduction, reuse, recycling, and composting, all of which divert materials from disposal facilities. Source reduction involves reducing the amount and toxicity of materials before they enter the waste stream, and can include product reuse, reduced material volume, reduced toxicity, increased product lifetime, and decreased consumption. In North America, source reduction programs have been implemented through education, research, financial incentives and disincentives (e.g., volume-based fees), regulation, and technological developments.

North American recycling programs can include many elements, such as source separation, curbside collection, centralized drop-off or buy-back facilities, materials recovery facilities, and mixed-waste processing facilities. Typical materials recycled in North America include: paper (e.g., cardboard, office paper, and newsprint), bottles and cans (e.g., aluminum, steel, glass, and plastic), ferrous scrap, batteries, tires, used oil, appliances, and construction and demolition debris. Composting, which is often considered a form of recycling, reduces the volume of organic material through degradation and creates compost, a soil amendment. (See "Composting," below, for information on backyard composting and centralized composting.)

Two main collection methods are used: central collection, where generators transport materials to a drop-off or buy-back center; and curbside collection, where recyclables are collected at the point of generation (usually households). Central collection centers have been in place for many years. Now, local governments trying to achieve higher recycling rates are starting curbside collection programs as well.

Central collection centers accept materials from homes and small businesses. They are commonly known as drop-off centers and buy-back centers. Both require generators to bring recyclables to a central facility, but only buy-back centers pay for the material. Both types of centers are less expensive to operate than curbside collection programs. Central collection is most effective in rural areas where curbside service is too expensive and in areas with high-rise apartment buildings, where garbage collection is already centralized. Collection centers can be as simple as brightly colored "igloo" containers in parking lots for collecting glass bottles, or as complex as multi-material centers that handle common recyclables as well as scrap metal and problem wastes. In rural areas, where residents are often responsible for transporting their own waste to disposal facilities, drop-off centers are often located at the local landfills and transfer stations.

The number of curbside programs in the US grew from just over 1,000 in 1988 to over 7,000 at present; over 100 million people receive curbside pickup of recyclables. In the province of Ontario, the first curbside recycling program was introduced in 1983. By 1987, programs were operating in 41 communities, and between 1988 and 1990, the number of household units being serviced increased dramatically from 34% to 60%. Legislation has since been passed requiring any municipality with a population greater than 5,000 to provide curbside recycling, and currently, 90% of households in Ontario receive this service. Most North American curbside programs collect recyclables from single family-homes. Residents place recyclables in special containers at the curb for pick-up by private or municipal haulers. The materials are usually brought to a central location where they are often processed before being shipped to markets. The added convenience of well-run curbside programs for residents usually results in greater waste diversion rates than for drop-off centers, but curbside programs are also more costly to operate. One of the keys to controlling curbside collection costs is efficiently integrating collection of recyclables with collection of refuse.

A combination of mandatory municipal programs and corporate initiatives is expanding the number of companies involved in commercial recycling and the types of materials collected. Many large companies have recycled for years to reduce their waste disposal costs. In fact, more than half of the total material recycled is typically recovered from the commercial sector. In anticipation of stricter regulations, Canadian industries have initiated a proposal to assist in the financing of recycling programs. CIPSI, the Canadian Industry Packaging Stewardship Initiative, proposes to share the cost burden of curbside recycling between the municipality, the province, and industry. To date, it is still being reviewed by the provincial governments, and it is not yet certain whether it will come into effect.

Materials recovery facilities and markets for recyclables

Materials recovery facilities (MRFs) are centralized facilities where recyclable materials are received in bulk from trucks, separated, and processed for market. The term MRF has been loosely applied to a variety of facilities from simple transfer stations with a baler to complex, mixed-waste processing facilities. In 1988 there were 27 MRFs in the US; now there are over 1,200. The facilities range in design capacity from 2 to 1,000 tons per day and vary widely in degree of mechanization. A MRF can be designed to recover a variety of materials including paper, glass, metals, and plastics and to separate each material into various grades. The design of the facility for a particular community or region will depend on regulatory and legislative standards, markets, and integration with the entire olid waste management system. The level of mechanization of the MRF will depend upon the materials targeted, the capital investment desired, and market requirements.

Markets for recyclable materials also vary by region; thus, access to transport and transportation costs often determine whether or not a material can be recycled economically. Seattle and Los Angeles, which both have major international ports, are able to sell mixed waste paper to countries of the Pacific rim. Local governments in the mid-Atlantic states have good markets for glass containers because a large number of glass manufacturers are concentrated in the region. In northern rural areas, where livestock spend long winters indoors, old newsprint is being shredded and used as animal bedding by local farmers. To reduce the distance to markets, some states are trying to entice secondary manufacturers to locate new plants in their state. Because post-consumer materials markets fluctuate greatly, many successful recycling programs have storage capacity to stockpile materials until markets become available.

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