Home And Residential Recycling Increase

While there are no national laws to deal with recycling in America, most states are taking the process
very seriously.
No less than 13 laws have recently enacted legislation that has created recycling centres whilst
others have imposed fines and weekly recycling pick ups. While the EPA (United States
Environmental Protection Agency) oversee waste management at a national level, there has yet to be
a federal set of laws brought in that deal specifically with recycling. There are rules and regulations
for getting rid of commercial waste however this has yet to spill over into the residential sphere.
In a lot of states safely and legally getting rid of your waste can be profitable. For example, in many
states across the country you can receive up to 10 cents for each glass or plastic bottle you recycle.
Many other places have specially designed bins and trash cans where you can deposit recyclable
materials.
Figures released recently shows that recycling is actually on the increase across the country even in
states where there is no mandatory need to do so. Overall the total amount of municipal solid
waste that is created by the American population fell by 5% and well over 60 million tonnes of
recyclable waste was collected last year. This is a staggering amount for a country that, by and large,
has no mandatory laws and instead deal with recycling on a state by state, or even county by county,
basis.
This number has kept on rising over recent years and it is a staggering 1 million tonnes more than
2010 and 3 million tonnes more than 2007.
Household recyclable materials accounted for the highest number of tonnes being recycled in the
past year so it is obvious that the message to recycle is getting across to ordinary people. Indeed,
recycling and its benefits not so much in a financial sense but rather as an environmental issue and
a global problem are not being taught in school. The k-12 education systems now has lesson in
place to help to spread the message about recycling and why it is good both for the environment and
the country as a whole. Non-profit organizations such as Center for a New American Dream and Be
SMART are well known inside the educational system for providing lesson plans and direction for
teachers to implement recycling as part of the curriculum.
More and more residential properties are beginning to see the benefits and worthwhile of recycling.
Recycling both home and garden waste significantly aides the planet in general as well as the
immediate neighbourhood area. People are now purchasing their own recycling bins is their local
authority does not provide one for them and this has many benefits. One element that does need
better education however is what you can or cannot recycle.
Some states do provide this for residential areas however in many cases there is a lack of information
and awareness that can have far reaching consequences. Home-owners and those who rent are both
contributing to the recycling and waste management effort across the country and its effects are
already being seen so far.

WHAT DOES THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY MEAN FOR FOOD & DRINK FIRMS?
17 June 2014
Jamie Butterworth, chief executive of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation explains why increased
material recycling and the concept of the circular economy is a huge opportunity for the food and
drink industry
The emergence of a new global middle class is good news, as billions of people are gradually being
lifted out of poverty and accessing education as well as healthcare. It naturally also represents a huge
opportunity for business in absolute terms, yet the linear take, make and dispose model of
economic growth is facing serious challenges including demographic expansion.
On average, a citizen in an OECD country buys 800 kg of food and beverages, 120 kg of packaging and
20 kg of new clothing and shoes every year. These goods are not returned, for the most part, for any
further economic use. With 3 billion additional consumers coming onto the market by 2030, its easy
to understand the sheer scale of the challenge.
$3.7 trillion worth of material goes into the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector globally
each year and only 20% of that volume is recovered or valorized an effective loss of $2.8 billion,
leading to a gradual erosion of primary resources. Surely, there has to be a better way?
How can companies in the FMCG sector set up restorative material loops, and shift to a circular
economy model?
In the beverage industry, packaging plays a vital role. As our research indicates, Towards the circular
economy Vol.2 - Opportunities for the consumer goods sector, ensuring that secondary raw materials
are used to produce new bottles yields significant benefits, both in terms of financial and in virgin
resources.
The introduction of the PET bottle in the late 1970s and the development of surrounding collection,
sorting and recycling infrastructure has led to the creation of an industry standard and arguably
provides one of the best examples of circular plastic flows within the economy.
Despite this, the discrepancy of recovery rates globally means that there is still a significant
opportunity for realising greater circularity and, in many countries, to increase recycling. Currently,
just half of the 19.8 million tonnes of PET produced globally get recycled every year, according to
the Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET): 2014 World Market Outlook and Forecast up to 2018 report.
We believe that there are four building blocks for capturing this value:
1. Optimised design and materials innovation for circularity
2. Focus on business model innovation across the supply circle to create an economic
incentive for increased circularity
3. Optimisation of collection, sorting, treatment and redeployment processes and
infrastructure
4. Enabling system conditions including the alignment of policy and education.
Labels labels labels
One example of how an idea can bring all these elements together is through the intelligent tagging
or labelling of plastic packaging.
The advent of smart labelling technologies could provide the ability for the waste/resource
management industry globally to identify the type of material coming into an MRF and even to
whom it belongs.
This fixes a broken link in the current FMCG value chain and enables margin to be shared with the
necessary stakeholders to incentivise continual improvement of processes and design. It also builds a
valuable data set to enable manufacturers to assess what volume of material is actually being
regenerated and what needs to be done to improve this.
Right now intelligent tagging of FMCG products is a very nascent technology. The Ellen MacArthur
Foundation runs a number of initiatives to support ideas like this across the innovation valley of
death from idea into reality.
One example is The Circular Economy 100, a platform for building innovation capacity, stimulating
joint venture opportunities and bringing together corporations emerging innovators, pilot regions
and the worlds leading design, engineering and business universities.
Jamie Butterworth is the chief executive of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, an independent charity
founded with the aim of accelerating the transition to a regenerative, circular economy.