Editor's Focus

Many communities aim to achieve 40 or 50 percent recycling rates by the year 2000. Some claim they have already reached these levels. But in his recent report, "Recycling In America," J. Winston Porter, president of the Waste Policy Center, Leesburg, Va., insists that 30 percent is the upper limit for recycling in the U.S. as a whole and in most cities.

In addition, Porter accuses cities that already claim high rates of recycling of "creative recycling calculations," and calls for standardized definitions. Some cities include scrap metal or recycled automobiles in their figures for material recycled; others fail to report commercially-generated waste, he says, making figures difficult to compare.

Although it’s true that nationally agreed upon criteria for what should be included in the definitions of both waste generated and materials recycled would be useful to make recycling rate comparisons between cities more meaningful, some in the industry have evidence that many cities are indeed recycling at high rates.

"Dozens of communities have surpassed the 30 percent mark," says Brenda Platt, director of materials recovery research for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Washington. ILSR has done rigorous research into municipal waste generation and recycling rates.

It is not particularly useful to have a former EPA assistant administrator such as Porter attempting to set limits on the amount the U.S. can recycle, especially as municipal recycling programs are consistently improving and adding new materials such as mixed paper and additional grades of plastics. Platt also points to numerous innovative recovery programs for durable goods and significant sources of untapped paper as means of increasing the nation’s recovery rate.

One reason to lower expectations regarding municipal and national recycling rates is to avoid the temptation to pass additional laws or regulations to meet high recycling goals, says Porter. But the more a city recycles, the more money it can save in avoided disposal costs, according to Platt. This creates an un-mandated incentive for cities to recycle as much as possible.

On the demand side as well, mandates are often not necessary. Witness the numerous paper deinking mills that have opened their doors in the past year, creating additional demand for mixed paper.

Perhaps a positive result of reports such as Porter’s will be that municipal recyclers will find ways to recycle increasing amounts of material in the most cost-effective manner possible before subscribing to artificially-created recycling limits.