Just a minor correction to this interesting thread - EPA's consultant
for its waste comp studies is Franklin Associates (www.fal.com),
founded in 1974 by Bill & Marjorie Franklin, and based in Kansas.
The Franklin Institute (www2.fi.edu) is in Philadelphia & was
founded by Ben Franklin in the late 1700s. The latter has evolved into
a great science museum and is worth a visit if you're in Philly.
And, a 2007 study showed that Colorado's recycling rate is
actually around 20%, but as we all know, it all depends on what you
count and don't count. I'm working here in CO and we need to recycle a
LOT more. But it can be hard with many large institutions enjoying
$12/T tip fees and high transport costs to recycle markets.
Fortunately, some
of the big generators are doing just what you recommend Dan, and taking
a close look at their waste streams via waste comp studies, to lay the
groundwork for better diversion.
Anne
Gracestone, Inc.
Boulder, CO
303.494.4934 vox/cell
303.494.4880 fax
Dan Knapp wrote:
Hello Jon:
At our regional transfer station I'm guessing that the
proportion of "discarded packaging and whole products" is more like
30%. As you probably know, "MSW" is an extremely slippery concept,
thanks to a continuing pattern of conceptual errors made by the EPA and
its hardwired advisor The Franklin Institute back more than three
decades ago. But Berkeley is a municipality that operates a regional
discard management facility that draws from many other cities all
around it, and our "MSW" does not resemble the profile you cite.
PPI's numbers do, though. Maybe you could enlighten us all on
the discrepancy?
Meanwhile, I continue to believe that there is no substitute to
going to the landfills and transfer stations and actually looking at
what's happening. Whenever I've had an opportunity to do so,
(including extensive tours of New Zealand and Australian facilities)
the profile looks like Berkeley's.
Dan Knapp
Urban Ore, Inc.
On Apr 17, 2008, at 6:26 PM, J. Michael Huls wrote:
Friends,
I
believe that the zero waste program that several industries are
implementing based on the 5Rs is very germane and appropriate for this
discussion. Refuse,
return, reduce, reuse, and recycle.
These actions combine to reduce dependence on scientific dumping
(landfill and incineration) as well as stopping the flow of matter that
gets discarded and requires recycling.
But
I do want to mention that I really appreciate Dan and Mary for their
leadership in the industry, and making their views known. I have never
made my admiration for them a secret. However, we all have roles to
play, and I equally respect others, "even" PPI, for their concerted
effort to stop the flow of matter that ends up needing to be recycled.
As we may know, 70% of our MSW today is likely composed of "discarded
packaging and whole products."
J.
Michael Huls, REA
Huls Environmental
Management, LLC
P.O. Box 4519
Covina, CA 91723-4519
(626) 332-7514 ext 26
ofc
(213) 840-9279
(cell) (626)
332-7504 fax
www.hulsenv.com
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Hello
Tedd, and all who receive this response:
I
agree with you, Tedd, and thank you for a very thoughtful and generous
response. Also, I now support and have always supported EPR as well as
ULS and source reduction in all its forms. And Mal, I'd love for all
of us Zero Wasters to "just get along." But my complaint about the
attack on recycling embedded in PPI's argumentation is substantive and
serious as I hope to show.
I
have spent many hours debating these issues both in public and in
private with representatives of PPI. A couple of years ago, in a NCRA
public debate featuring Bill Sheehan and I, Bill put up an astonishing
powerpoint slide that neatly summarized the problem. Here's what it
said: EPR + composting = Zero Waste. PPI and its affiliates are still
using this gross reductionism today.
To
anyone who works at a transfer station or landfill that is open to the
public, this formula does not match reality. What happened to all the
stuff from the built environment, from 200 to 400 years' worth in most
communities? It can never be affected by EPR, yet it is the lion's
share of stuff that's already produced and coming to our transfer
stations and landfills every day. It's invisible in PPI's reckoning,
yet they say we can ignore it and still somehow get to zero waste.
Like
you, Bill has told me in private that I should mute my critique because
after all, we are interested in the same goal. Fine, I reply, just
stop maligning me and all the other independent recyclers on your way
to proving your point.
I
actually thought I had made some progress with PPI until the NCRA
Update conference on April Fools Day, where I picked up a new brochure
from the California Product Stewardship Council. The last phrase on
the foldout says "Developed with support from The Product Policy
Institute", and includes PPI's north star logo. Whatever the beliefs
of the CPSC, the brochure they are handing out to the public is a
rehash of pure and distilled PPI talking points, which have remained
remarkably consistent for the last several years.
Here's
a quote from the flyer: "The simple fact is that existing recycling
efforts and disposal bans aren't reducing total waste generation.
Despite our best efforts, we're losing the battle." (Elsewhere in
other papers, Mr. Sheehan calls recycling a "failure." And how many
EPR-istas have you heard mouthing the slogans "Oh, recycling, that's so
twentieth century" or "so end-of-pipe."
For me, it's been a lot, way too many. In game theory this behavior is
a zero-sum game, meaning one side can't win without the other losing.
I
believe that PPI's conceptual error begins with its uncritical
acceptance of the Franklin Institute's catechismic principle that
everything becomes waste the moment it is discarded, regardless of what
happens to it next. So all our attempts to reform the way we think
about discards -- calling them resources, for example, or saying we
dispose of them by conserving them -- is irrelevant. "Waste
generation" figures come not from transfer stations, not from observing
what is actually being dumped and either wasted or conserved, but from
Franklin Institute desktop studies of production, read: "generation."
Everything else in the discard supply is irrelevant, invisible,
inconsequential, by definition if not in fact. This is sophistry.
In
Berkeley, according to Peter Holtzclaw, our most recent Refuse
Superintendant, we sent 225,000 tons to landfill in 1990. At our last
Zero Waste Commission meeting Peter said that in a mere seventeen years
from 1990 that wasting tonnage had dropped to 95,000 tons, close to a
60% reduction. Doesn't this conflict with PPI's ideology? True, there
are probably more discards now than in 1990, but that has nothing to do
with what is being wasted. The brute fact is that wasting numbers are
down, way down, at Berkeley's regional transfer station. Alameda
County has many other jurisdictions that are achieving these kinds of
numbers. So we're not losing the battle, we're winning! We should be
analyzing the why of this, not repeating false and misleading slogans
that make us out to be failures, enablers, "an afterthought,"
whatever.
When
I told Rick Anthony of these wasting numbers in Berkeley he said the
same is true in the San Diego area. I'm sure Oakland and San
Franscisco, among others, can show similar Zero Waste progress. Other
parts of California aren't doing so well. But none of that variation
means anything to PPI, which trumpets our collective failure across the
board. (Mary Lou Van Deventer points out that with the PPI's
formulation, we could be reusing and recycling everything discarded and
still be losing the "waste generation battle." Does this make sense?)
Other
lowlites from the brochure:
• a
pie chart showing "waste production is increasing" with 3/4 of it
colored mustard (products), and 1/4 colored green (food/yard).
• a
bar chart showing "In US, product waste far outstrips all other
types". The mustard bar is 174.9 million tons; the green bar is 58
million tons.
• a
bargraph headlined "Waste Production (in California) is increasing..."
in which recycling numbers and wasting numbers are combined to form a
procession of bars marching ever higher, leading to the illogical but
waste-friendly conclusion that wasting equals recycling because both
are just different forms of "waste production." Eh?
• a
paragraph that says "We suggest that manufactured product discards be
managed by producers or
their agents.
(italics mine). Local
governments should focus limited resources on managing things that are
grown --
(bolding mine) like yard trimmings and food scraps."
The
phrase "...or their agents" might mean recyclers, but who knows?.
There's not a word in the whole flyer (printed expensively with soy
inks using wind power on 100% recycled oversized card stock ) about
resource recovery parks or the continuing need to support them, too.
That would be the "existing recycling efforts and disposal bans", which
have failed, wouldn't it? So why shouldn't local governments conclude
from this that they can safely stop supporting their local discard
management transfer facilities and associated materials recovery
businesses and convert them and the land they are on to "higher" uses,
like retail outlets for all the imported goods we as American Patriots
are supposed to be consuming?
Starting
in 2007 in Berkeley we narrowly fought off an attempt to rezone our
entire transfer station complex for auto dealer use, part of the City's
plan to increase sales tax revenue to pay for their employees' high
salaries and huge retirement liabilities. It doesn't matter to the
Planning Department that the 60% waste reduction number comes from the
efforts and hard, effective work of six or eight enterprises based at
or near the transfer station complex . It doesn't matter that
it's hundreds of men and women working in "green collar" jobs who are
responsible for a big share of this cut.
Urban
Ore's property was scheduled for similar upzoning; we and other
neighboring businesses fought like crazy and stopped it at the Planning
Commission level. But new threats pop up all the time, and the
industrial land we need for expansion is being nibbled to death as we
speak. PPI does not seem to think it has any responsibility for this
deplorable state of affairs, in its own way as threatening to real Zero
Waste as the more overtly hostile actions of the Australian ACT
government. I believe I have shown that their argument directly
supports moves and threats like this.
I
did not pick this fight with PPI. My purpose is to defend homegrown
reuse, recycling, and composting, and to celebrate its successes. I
first began to notice the attack on recycling from the EPR quarter
about eight or ten years ago, but was too busy and preoccupied with our
business move to counter it then. Now I'm playing catchup, but I
really, really would like the EPR-istas to develop a more truthful and
more realistic approach to zero waste -- and EPR. Tedd, maybe you or
some others could help them. I've tried, to little effect so far as I
can tell.
Dan
Knapp, Ph.D.
Urban
Ore, Inc.
PS:
PPI is against banning, too, apparently. But I don't want to go back
to styrofoam cups in Berkeley or elsewhere, do you? And by the way,
who is paying for PPI to do this lobbying, anyway?
On
Apr 16, 2008, at 3:35 PM, Tedd Ward wrote:
Dan:
Always
a pleasure to read your analysis of the international movements and
where they appear to be headed. Surely the news fromCanberra
is disappointing and I appreciate your perspectives on those
developments.
I
must, however, strongly disagree with the statement ‘Zero
Waste has also been commandeered as a brand by the Product Policy
Institute, among others, and they and others have tried to make zero
waste into a synonym for Extended Producer Responsibility…’
I
fully acknowledge that much of what is now referred to as ‘Zero Waste’
(at least within the wonky jargoneers) developed out of your years of
good work on ‘Total Recycling,’ with the former term coming into
widespread use largely due to the efforts of entities like GRRN, CRRA,
ZWIA, and EcoCycle, followed by the CIWMB. I think if you refer to
any of these sources, you will see that EPR is just one aspect of the
Zero Waste approach.
If
any confusion arises between EPR and ZW, I think it is because ZW
differs significantly from what has be termed ‘Integrated Waste
Management’ (IWM) by targeting ways the current resource-product-discard
system must change if the market system is to really reward resource
and energy efficiency. I do not claim that your work on ‘Total
Recycling’ ignored these systemic issues, but I think some people who
are just learning about Zero Waste think something like ZW = IWM +
EPR. This is not correct, just like ZW is not AB939 at 100%
diversion. Both are incomplete understandings of the big picture
advocated under the term ‘Zero Waste’.
That said, I think there is no reason to slam PPI for advocating EPR,
or for their advocating EPR as part of a system moving towards Zero
Waste. That is what they do. EPR is complicated enough, and I for one
would not criticize an advocate of EPR (we need many more), for not
going into adequate detail of other non-EPR aspects of ZW or Total
Recycling. Similarly, I would not blame Urban Ore for not covering
the many ways the system producing waste is subsidized (or the need for
EPR) during a tour of your impressive facilities and programs. Nobody
is completely right or comprehensive all of the time, and there is no
reason to expect it.
True,
EPR actions in California for HHW products have some momentum right now
because local gov’ts are being asked to set up separate financially
unsustainable systems to handle hazardous products, and agencies like
ours simply cannot afford to capture more than 15% of these streams.
So right now EPR has some urgency from the local gov’t perspective
for hazardous materials from the moment a product or material is
designated as hazardous or needing to be managed separately from the
organics stream. Given that EPR is such a big change from our current
system, will likely have strong industry opposition, and that it will
take coordinated advocacy from local gov’ts, I am not surprised that
EPR has eclipsed all other ZW actions for the moment for many. In
fact, I encourage all local gov’t types reading this post to get
involved with the important work of the California Product Stewardship
Council. Check out:
http://www.caproductstewardship.org/
Similarly,
policy wonks for EPR and ZW should continue to be respectful (and
acknowledge the continuing contributions) of all of us in recovery ‘at
the back end.’ We each have a piece of the puzzle, and each piece is
important.
Yours
in recovery,
Tedd
Ward, M.S. - Program Manager
Del
Norte Solid Waste Management Authority
1700
State Street
Crescent
City,
CA
95531
(707)
465-1100
"My
life is garbage, but I'm in recovery."
To
All:
As
many of you know, the proximate source of inspiration that launched the
worldwide movement for zero waste in 1996 was the Australian Capital
Territory (ACT) government in Canberra,
Australia.
Earlier efforts in the same direction had primarily focused on total
recycling, of which I was and still am a champion.
Now
those of you who are celebrating further successes in what I recently
called "zero waste goalism" would do well to understand and acknowledge
that zero waste goals mean less than nothing when there is no will to
make real zero waste happen. The proof is, once again, Canberra
Australia, which in mid-2007 opened its new $11 million landfill cell
after using up the entire hillside landfill site (supposed to be its
last) that it called the Mugga Lane landfill. Further proof: ACT
NoWaste's attacks on Revolve, the nonprofit landfill scavenger business
that really invented the Australian concept of zero waste; ACT's
refusal to build the Zero Waste Resource Recovery Park on land set
aside in 1996 or 1997 for the purpose with money made from their
profits on wasting; ACT's attempts to restrict competition for the
discard supply so that more waste, not less, goes into landfill; and
ACT's tardy removal of "no waste by 2010" from ACT NoWaste's publicity
materials, trucks, and logos. Until they removed the date in 2006 and
2007, the zero waste goal functioned in Canberra
as a cloak to hide their waste-friendly actions. Now they've finally
owned up to their betrayal of the public's trust.
So
beware! I presented a ten-minute powerpoint on Canberra
relying on my site visit to Canberra
in April of 2007 as well as on photos and correspondence from Gerry
Gillespie and Carolyn Brooks at the annual Recycling Update conference
in Oakland,
CA
sponsored by the Northern California Recycling Association. It was
immediately labeled a "cautionary tale" by Tom Padia of StopWaste.org
and others in the audience of 170 recycling professionals.
Zero
Waste has also been commandeered as a brand by the Product Policy
Institute, among others, and they and others have tried to make zero
waste into a synonym for Extended Producer Responsibility. This is no
less false and misleading than Canberra's
brand of sophistry, in my opinion, because it dismisses honest
hardworking recyclers dealing everyday with the gazillions of tons of
discarded materials flowing from the built environment to landfill and
transfer stations that have already been manufactured and therefore can
never be affected by EPR.
I
see EPR as an important part of source reduction (the "reduce" part of
"reduce, reuse, recycle" imperative), but only a part. When you look
closely at what EPR-istas concentrate on, it is mostly low-tonnage but
important stuff like household toxics, pharmaceuticals, and the like.
All well and good, and more power to them, but let's not forget other
potent source reduction tools like ULS (Use Less Stuff), the focus of
Annie Leonard's popular new video.
And
let's support total recycling in source-separation-based
12 category resource recovery parks and celebrate them
when, against long odds, they somehow or other get built and occupied
by real recyclers producing quality feedstocks.
The
other two legs of the 3R tripod should not be subject to insults like
"so twentieth century" and "so end-of-pipe",
but they are thanks to EPR zealots.
Urban
Ore, Inc., a reuse and recycling business in Berkeley,
Californiasince
1980
On
Apr 11, 2008, at 11:25 AM, Gary Liss wrote:
Apologies
for Cross-postings & please forward to colleagues who may be
interested
The
3rd Citywide Conference for the Los
Angeles
Zero Waste Plan is Here!
Please
join us for the 3rd Citywide Conference for the Zero waste Plan. This
will be the final conference for Phase 1 of the project and will be a celebration
of
all of the hard work and input provided by you,
the stakeholders, for the Zero Waste Plan thus far! The conference will
be on May
3, 2008at
the Cathedral
of Our Lady of Angels
conference center from 8:30
am to 1:00 pm.
The Cathedral is located at 555
W. Temple Street
in downtown Los
Angeles..
All conference attendees will receive complimentary
parking.
Don't
forget!
We will also be having a Zero
Waste Film Festival
from
7:30-8:30
am
along with a complimentary
continental breakfast.
A complimentary
lunch
will be served later in the day.
This
is the chance for you to sign
off on the Guiding Principles
for the plan, join your fellow stakeholders in celebration for the
first year being completed and for you toshare
your SWIRP story
with others.
Want
more information?
Please contact Rebecca Wood atrebeccajanewood@yahoo.com
.
Tell your family, friends, coworkers and neighbors about this special
event and RSVPwith
Vikki Zale via email at vikkizale@no.address.com
or
via phone at (310) 822-2010.
Gary
Liss
916-652-7850
Fax:
916-652-0485
www.garyliss.com
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