Cities across the United States continue to take a quantity-over-quality approach to waste management that often leads to inefficient, expensive and confusing outcomes. It’s time to rethink recycling strategies.
While recycling remains a great way to reducing upstream impacts of mining virgin materials to make products, the current “recycling religion’s” emphasis on setting weight-based goals fail to address many varying environmental benefits of disparate materials. Meanwhile, technologies are changing faster than our dated recycling systems can adapt to.
“Our weight-based system has pushed us to accept a broad array of material types without evidence of their environmental benefit,” said Susan Robinson, senior public affairs director at Waste Management, during a recent GreenBiz webinar series.
“However, by focusing strategically on recycling the right things well, we can achieve our goals more efficiently and cost-effectively than by trying to do it all.”
Enter sustainable materials management. Introduced in 2009 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, this approach to waste management looks at the entire lifecycle of goods and products — and not just end-of-life — to establish programs and priorities.
“Sustainable materials management allows us to use data to analyze strategies to achieve optimal environmental benefits,” said Robinson. “The solutions from using lifecycle analysis are not always obvious, and they are forcing (us to) examine some of our decades-old beliefs about recycling and diversion.”
Lifecycle Analysis for Smarter Recycling
Lifecycle analysis allows us to look at the “big picture” by examining a product’s complete life cycle, from raw materials to final disposal of the product — it offers a “cradle to grave” look at a product or process that considers environmental aspects and potential impacts.
“Using lifecycle analysis, it becomes crystal clear that the greatest greenhouse gas reduction potential associated with our industry is tied to the benefits of not using virgin resources in the first place,” said Robinson. In other words: Recycling definitely is worth it, but we need to get smarter about what we recycle.
To read the full story, visit https://www.greenbiz.com/article/why-we-should-rethink-weight-based-recycling-goals.