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Neil Seldman provides an update and review of recycling and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) developments based on his interviews with recycling practitioners, local officials and environmental leaders. Download the policy review.
For decades the US recycling movement has fought garbage incinerators that threatened to smother it in its infancy. Indeed, recycling is now a $300 billion industry in large part because of the success of a broad grassroots movement in halting the construction of hundreds of new incinerators. But, according to a policy review by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, the specter of a revived incineration industry is again threatening the recycling industry and, ironically, this threat is being enabled by the application of new environmental strategy intended to increase re-use and recycling: Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). In British Columbia, for example, the EPR program has embraced the construction of three new incinerators.… Read More
Two new reports from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s Composting Makes $en$e Project document the importance of expanded composting and compost use to enhance soils, protect watersheds, reduce waste, and create green jobs and a new made-in-America industrial sector. For press release, click here. With compostable material making up almost one-half of municipal solid waste, there is … Read More
Recycling is an economic development tool as well as an environmental tool. Reuse, recycling, and waste reduction offer direct development opportunities for communities. When collected with skill and care, and upgraded with quality in mind, discarded materials are a local resource that can contribute to local revenue, job creation, business expansion, and the local economic base.… Read More
The Young Activist Club worked a booth at the Takoma Park Earth Day Festival, educating citizens on the health problems with polystyrene #76 plastics and gathering petitions to send to Montgomery County (MD) Schools Superintendent Starr requesting permission to pilot a durable lunch tray washing project. Petition is available online too. Click here.
ILSR’s Brenda Platt co-leads the Young Activist Club of Takoma Park, Maryland. On Earth Day, April 22, the Washington Nationals baseball team honored the Club by inviting 9 members to be the Starting 9 for the Nats’ game against the Cardinals. After the first pitch by EPA acting administrator Bob Perciasepe, members of the Young Activist … Read More
Columbia Patch, April 22, 2013 It’s easy to think nothing of throwing carrot or potato peels into the trash or down the garbage disposal. They quickly decompose. But Howard County announced on Monday that residents can participate in an expanded pilot program that composts food scrap and yard waste. A new composting facility at the Alpha … Read More
ILSR, GAIA & The Institute for Policy Studies invite YOU to come meet and celebrate 2013 Goldman Environmental Prize winners!… Read More
What does an incinerator industry do when they can’t compete? Change the rules. Biomass and trash incinerators are the most expensive way to make energy, and trash incineration costs more than directly landfilling the waste. These industries survive to the extent that they can change the rules to get monopoly waste contracts, become ‘renewable’ energy in state mandates, or as we’re seeing in Maryland: worse.… Read More
