Editor's Focus

When are legislators going to learn?

For years, scrap processors and recyclers have been hammering home the idea that scrap materials are an internationally traded commodity, not a solid waste. Garbage is not traded in the same manner as recyclables such as ferrous scrap, although the types of materials that can be recovered for recycling from the municipal waste stream has steadily increased over the past decade.

In fact, the recyclable items generated by citizens, although small in volume, may have caused some of the confusion between solid waste and recyclables. If a soup can was garbage five years ago when it wasn’t recycled, why is it something different today? Regulators need to learn that it is something different today. It is now a commodity with value that can be bought and sold, and used again in manufacturing.

Numerous battles have been fought on the legislative and judicial fronts regarding whether municipalities should be allowed to implement flow control and franchise agreements for solid waste and recyclables, with recyclers standing strong against these types of policies.

But even though the U.S. Supreme Court, in the Carbone vs. Clarkstown, N.Y., case, and the California Supreme Court, in the Waste Management of the Desert vs. Palm Springs Recycling case, both ruled against flow control, proponents of these types of regulation keep trying again from new angles.

This month Recycling Today reports on a tiered permitting structure being proposed in California. Although the exact nature of the permitting structure has not yet been finalized, recyclers fear that including recycling facilities in the same regulatory structure as solid waste facilities creates confusion about the nature of recyclables.

Although it is probably true, as some proponents of the tiered permitting structure argue, that there should be a level playing field for all the various types of solid waste processing and disposal facilities, recyclers need not be included. Large handlers of both solid waste and recyclables say they must pay large fees and conform to any number of environmental standards from which smaller recyclers — that may also generate some solid waste from rejected material — are exempt. But the distinction between collecting solid waste and generating some waste in the course of recycling is clear.

But what about facilities that both recycle and process solid waste? Should a mixed-waste processing facility be regulated as a solid waste facility? What about a commingled recycling facility run by a waste management company?

Clearly this is a complex issue, requiring much thought and debate. And it will be a long road ahead until there are firm legislative precedents stating that scrap and waste are separate materials and should be regulated separately.

The bottom line is, scrap is not waste, and the government should not interfere with the free movement of recyclables.