Today’s column is taking parts from several items in a recent Resource Recycling newsletter, the first of which talks about quite a bit of money (anyway, in my mind it is).
The Recycling Partnership organization believes, “… $17 billion in funding for the domestic residential recycling sector could increase the national recycling rate to nearly 70%.”
Of course, all that money wouldn’t be spent at one time or in one place. (They also didn’t report where they thought that money might come from… maybe they were hoping it would grow on trees?)
That money would be spent over a period of five years. They believe this investment would, “… completely transform the U.S. residential recycling system, maximize its potential and make it as accessible to all households as trash service.” They also believe its economic benefits could be significant.
This effort would have to involve all levels of government, the industry, investors and the public. Breaking it down a little, about $4 billion would go toward making it easier for all households to recycle (how, they didn’t state), $3 billion for more and improved Materials Recovery Facilities (MRFs) and $4 billion for better recovery of film and flexible plastics.
How the rest would.be used the article didn’t say except that $1.2 billion eac year for the five years would be allocated for “education and outreach strategies to improve recycling behavior. They feel such investments would result in 169 million tons of recyclables into the U.S. collection effort and changing the current recycling rate from 32% to 68%. (That’s over double.)
So about how much are we recycling now? From a report by the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA), we find the U.S. paper recycling rate was 65.7% in 2020. They also related that the OCC recycling rate was 88.8% last year.
And a primary aluminum recycler noted their company’s recycled aluminum rate was 61%, up slightly from 60% from the previous year.
For glass recycling, one large company stated its goal was to use an average of at least 50% recycled glass in its products by 2030. In the area of plastics, a spokesperson for Coca-Cola believes this beverage giant will have about 20% RPET use in their containers by the end of this year.
Going to other good news, the wood products manufacturer Georgia-Pacific has opened a processing unit to recover fiber from particularly contaminated streams. This material would have otherwise been landfilled. Other good news is the Northeast Resource Recovery Association reported many recycling facilities are again operating at 100% again, after pandemic disruptions. And going to the West Coast, there are some to reopen and convert a closed Washington state newsprint mill to a packaging production facility using recycled fiber. That’s it for this week, praying you will have a happy and healthy week, till next time...
