&EBV
United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
REUSABLE
NEWS
Resource Conservation Challenge: Are You Up To It?
WHAT CAN YOU
SAVE TODAY?
S M T W T F S
\
RESOURCE CONSERVATION
CHALLENGE
' oday, we are challenging all
Americans to take personal
responsibility for their day-to-
day decisions, and to take one small
action every day to conserve our natural
resources, EPA is asking Americans to
adopt smart environmental practices,
make smart environmental purchases,
reuse more products, and recycle at least
one pound of their household waste a
day."
With these words, Marianne Horinko,
Assistant Administrator for EPA's Office
of Solid Waste and Emergency Response
(OSWER), launched EPA's Resource Con-
servation Challenge to the nation in her
keynote address at the National Recycling
Coalition's Annual Congress and Exposi-
tion in Austin, Texas, last September. The
Resource Conservation Challenge is just
that—a "challenge"—to large and small
businesses, manufacturers, consumers,
communities, youth—all Americans—to
do more to reduce waste, cut greenhouse
gas (GHG) emissions, recover energy, and
protect valuable natural resources.
The initiative has three goals: (l) pol-
lution prevention and recycling of mate-
rials, (2) recovering energy through
process modifications and conversion of
wastes to energy, and (3) pollution pre-
vention (or recycling as a second
chance) of 39 "priority" chemicals. The
materials and energy challenges will not
only support existing goals to increase
the national recycling rate and reduce
the per capita rate of waste generation
but will also expand EPA's effort beyond
municipal waste. The priority chemical
challenges initially will focus on 30 pri-
ority chemicals identified by the waste
program and then be supplemented by
(Continued on page 2)
New Studies Measure Extent and Benefits of Recycling
Recycling is growing, playing a
role in reducing GHG emis-
sions, and helping build the
U.S. economy. Recycling rates and
many of the benefits of recycling—
both environmental and economi-
cal—are documented in several
new reports.
According to EPA's Municipal
Solid Waste in the United States:
2000 Facts and Figures (EPA530-R-
02-001), 30.1 percent of the munici-
pal solid waste (MSW) generated in
the United States was recycled in
2000—a monumental increase from
1990, when the national recycling
rate was 16.2 percent. The report
also reviews generation, recycling,
and disposal rates for all the materi-
als in MSW and includes special
chapters on source reduction and
electronics recycling. The report is
available in hard copy from the
RCRA Hotline at 800 424-9346 and
on the Internet at
.
Although the U.S. recycling rate
for MSW has significantly
increased over the past decade,
global atmospheric concentrations
of GHGs also have increased dra-
matically over the past century.
The Climate Action Report 2002
(United States' 2002 submission
under the United Nations Frame-
work Convention on Climate
Change) reviews the issues associ-
ated with climate change, includ-
ing current and future trends in
GHG emissions. The publication
makes the point that renewable
energy sources, such as wind, geo-
thermal, and solar, can help reduce
GHG concentrations, and their
applications hold great promise for
the future. But, the report notes,
recycling is an activity everyone
can participate in today to help
reduce GHG emissions. In 2000,
U.S. energy savings attributed to
recycling totaled 661 trillion
British thermal units—enough
energy to power 215 million refrig-
erators for an entire year. GHG
reductions associated with these
energy savings totaled 32.9 million
(Continued on page 3)
) Printed on paper that contains at least 50 percent postconsumer fiber.
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Resource Conservation Challenge
(Continued from page 1)
an additional nine persistent,
bioaccumulative, and toxic chem-
icals that have been the focus of
other EPA offices. OSWER hopes
to accomplish the program objec-
tives in part through forming
challenge partnerships with other
programs in the Agency (e.g.,
OPPTS, OEI, OECA), the states,
tribes, industry, the environmen-
tal community, and academia.
The Challenge shifts EPA's cur-
rent orientation away from projects
that focus only on "end-of-life"
issues (such as cleaning up wastes
and only recycling) toward a
"beginning-of-life" perspective,
using strategies to help shape a new
marketplace, one that encourages
product design stewardship and
more sustainable business and con-
sumer behavior. In addition to chal-
lenging Americans to make smarter
purchasing and disposal decisions,
it also tests creative approaches to
waste minimization, energy recov-
ery, recycling.
Public commitment is crucial to
meeting the Challenge, and EPA
will engage the public through
messages and partnerships. EPA is
conducting a campaign on several
fronts to educate and inform
Americans about the impact of
waste on resource and energy use,
GHG emissions, and pollution.
Three of the components of the
public campaign are:
• Partnerships and alliances with
industry, states, and environ-
mental groups designed to pro-
vide smarter, faster, voluntary
solutions that will safeguard
natural resources.
• Training, tools, and technology
assistance for businesses, govern-
ments, and others to make it eas-
ier for businesses and consumers
to reduce waste, acquire and cre-
ate a demand for recycled materi-
als, and purchase products that
contain recycled materials.
• Information, outreach and
assistance to the general public
and specifically to youth, His-
panic and Black communities,
Indian Tribes and Nations,
major retailers, electronic manu-
facturers, and the entertainment
industry to reinforce and renew
waste prevention efforts across
the country.
The campaign promises to rein-
vigorate, reinform, and re-energize
Americans to prevent waste. A
snapshot of some of EPA's initiatives
in the Resource Conservation Chal-
lenge that apply these concepts are:
WasteWise Partners
Through our WasteWise Partner-
ship Program, more than 1,200
partners from business, govern-
ment, and institutions reduce
MSW through innovative waste
prevention and recycling tech-
niques. They have voluntarily
reduced more than 35 million tons
of MSW. WasteWise Partners con-
tinue to take on new challenges,
such as encouraging the reuse and
recycling of construction and
demolition debris and the use of
recycled products to create new
"green buildings."
Waste Minimization
Partnership
The National Waste Minimiza-
tion Partnership Program builds on
the success of our WasteWise Pro-
gram. Through waste reduction
and energy recovery, it facilitates
government and private sector
actions: (l) to encourage shifts in
waste generation and management
practices, (2) to encourage efficient
production, (3) to turn waste into
new sources of raw materials and
energy, and (4) to buy recycled
products. The program also is sup-
porting efforts by communities to
move toward a greater degree of
energy independence through gasi-
fication systems that convert solid
and industrial waste into a syn-
thetic natural gas.
Product Stewardship
Partnerships
EPA's Office of Solid Waste has
helped to facilitate the National
Electronics Product Stewardship
Initiative (NEPSI), which brings
stakeholders together to develop
solutions to better manage end-of-
life electronic products in an
environmentally sound way.
NEPSI aims to recommend a sys-
tem with a viable national financ-
ing mechanism to maximize the
collection, reuse, and recycling of
used electronics.
A major product stewardship
breakthrough came on January 8,
2002, with a Memorandum of
Understanding (MOU) among EPA,
the carpet industry's trade associa-
tion, major manufacturers, and par-
ticipating state and regional
governments. The MOU creates a
new industry-funded organization
to back the development of recy-
cling infrastructure and provides for
government procurement and mar-
ket development initiatives to sup-
port this undertaking. By 2012, the
partnership hopes to increase the
reuse of used carpets from the cur-
rent level of 5 percent to 40 percent.
For more information about these
partnerships, visit
< www. ep a. go v/epr>.
We Can Do More
Through these and other efforts,
the Resource Conservation Chal-
lenge calls on all Americans to do
more to conserve natural resources
and save and recover energy. Yes—
recycling 30 percent of MSW gener-
ated in the United States in 2000
saved the equivalent of more than 5
billion gallons of gasoline, reducing
dependence on foreign oil by 114
million barrels. But—even though
consumers, businesses, industries,
and institutions have made impres-
sive waste prevention and reduction
efforts, the United States still gener-
ates nearly 232 million tons of
waste annually. We can and must
do more.
For more information about the
Resource Conservation Challenge,
visit or
contact David Hockey at
703 308-8846.
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Take the Green Building Challenge
Through the Green Building
Challenge, EPA's WasteWise
program hopes to motivate its
partners to reduce, reuse, and recy-
cle construction and demolition
(C&D) debris and buy more recycled
building products. Companies
engaging in building activities, from
renovating office space to building a
new production plant, can save
money and protect the environment
with resource-efficient construction.
As part of the challenge, EPA is
encouraging companies to:
• Incorporate environmental spec-
ifications into building contracts
and guidelines.
• Rehabilitate an existing struc-
ture instead of demolishing it.
• Use deconstruction techniques
rather than demolition if a
building must be torn down.
• Frame structures efficiently to
reduce the amount of lumber
used without sacrificing struc-
tural integrity.
• Invest in durable products to
make sure materials last as long
as possible.
• Return unused construction
material to vendors.
• Consider the end-of-life manage-
ment, or recycling potential, of
building products at the start of
a project.
• Salvage C&D debris for sale and
reuse.
• Purchase recycled-content build-
ing materials, including insula-
tion, carpet, cement, paint, floor
tiles, shower and restroom
dividers, laminated paperboard,
and structural fiberboard.
For more information, go to
WasteWise's Green Building Chal-
lenge Resources Web Page at
.
In addition to environmental
benefits, many economic benefits
arise from a commitment to recy-
cling and reuse. The Final Report
of the Recycling Economic Infor-
mation Project, commissioned by
EPA and numerous states through
a cooperative agreement with the
National Recycling Coalition
(NRC), highlights the growth of the
recycling and reuse industries.
NRC determined that 56,061 recy-
cling and reuse companies,
employing approximately 1.1 mil-
lion people, operate in the United
States. These companies generate a
How You—Yes You—Can Estimate
Greenhouse Gas Savings
EPA has developed the WAste Reduction Model (WARM) to help solid
waste planners and organizations estimate GHG emissions from baseline
and alternative waste management scenarios, including recycling, com-
posting, and combustion. WARM is available in a Web-based calculator format
and a Microsoft Excel® spreadsheet at .
A handy companion piece for the WARM is EPA's update of its GHG report,
Solid Waste Management and Greenhouse Cases: A Life-Cycle Assessment of
Emissions and Sinks, 2nd Edition (EPA530-R-02-006). The report includes the
methodology for developing GHG emission factors for MSW management. This
second edition includes updated GHG emission factors for all the commodities
included in the original report plus five new commodities, expands on earlier
analysis of composting, and discusses emerging issues in climate change and
waste. The report is available in hard copy from the RCRA Hotline at 800 424-
9346 and on the Internet at .
payroll of $37 billion and gross
$236 billion in revenue annually.
The recycling and reuse industry
is comparable in size to the auto-
mobile and trucking manufactur-
ing industries and is nearly five
times the size of the waste man-
agement industry. The report also
illustrates how overall economic
activity is stimulated by busi-
nesses that offer goods and ser-
vices to the recycling and reuse
industry, such as office supply
companies, legal firms, and build-
ing and landscape maintenance
firms. The study's economic mod-
els estimate that nearly 1.4 million
jobs are maintained in these sup-
port businesses, and an additional
1.5 million jobs are supported
through recycling and reuse indus-
try employee spending. In addi-
tion, state and federal governments
can experience significant revenue
benefits from local government
spending on recycling programs.
The report is available in hard
copy from the RCRA Hotline at
800 424-9346 and on the Internet
at .
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Satellite Forum Features Waste
Prevention Trend Setters
During the 2-hour satellite
forum, Communities: Setting
Trends in Waste Prevention
and Recycling, held May 1, 2002,
solid waste managers learned new
strategies to address program chal-
lenges. The forum was one in a
series sponsored by EPA's Munici-
pal and Industrial Solid Waste Divi-
sion, and its WasteWise Program,
along with the National Recycling
Coalition and the Solid Waste Asso-
ciation of North America.
Audience members from more
than 40 states and Canada tuned in
to EPA's free satellite forum to learn
from recycling managers from across
the United States. Participants heard
about ways their towns can reduce
waste through electronics reuse and
recycling, construction and demoli-
tion (C&D) debris management, and
composting, as well as how to run a
recycling program on a tight budget.
They also heard about how recy-
cling can help stop global climate
change by reducing the greenhouse
gases associated with the manufac-
ture, distribution, use, and dis-
posal of products.
The four forum panelists
were Tom Padia of Alameda
County, California, Waste Man-
agement Authority and Source
Reduction and Recycling Board;
Charlie Reighart of Baltimore
County, Maryland, Department of
Public Works; John Reindel of
Dane County, Wisconsin, Depart-
ment of Public Works; and Laura
Weber of the St. Regis Mohawk
Tribe in New York state. By shar-
ing their experiences, providing
examples of real-life recycling pro-
grams, and answering questions,
the panelists provided insight into
waste management options for vari-
ous types of communities. Some of
their areas of expertise they
reviewed are:
• Planning and setting up a col-
lection infrastructure.
• Recycling electronics waste
from business.
• Recovering C&D debris.
This issue of Reusable News is also available on
the Internet. Access this and other EPA publications
through the World Wide Web at .
• Reducing the amount of C&D
debris communities generate by
incorporating "green building"
guidelines into county construc-
tion requirements.
• Composting organic materials.
• Promoting public education.
The forum was broadcast to
more than 200 downlink sites and
carried live over the Internet by
the Pennsylvania Department of
Environmental Protection. To learn
some of the specific suggestions
from the panelists, order a video of
the forum via the WasteWise Web
site at . To learn
more about the forum panelists,
visit .
Solid Waste and
Emergency Response (5305W)
EPA530-N-03-001
Spring 2003
www.epa.gov
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