Recycling is workinQ
The U.S. Recycling Economic Information Project
Documenting the economic impact of recycling
and reuse in the United States.
Frequently Asked Questions
A product of the National Recycling Coalition
Q: What was included in the definition
of the recycling and reuse industry?
A: Establishments, whether private sector
or local governments, whose employees
perform hands-on recycling and reuse
activities, including the first stage of
manufacturing where recovered materi-
als are consumed instead of virgin
materials covered by the Project.
"Hands-on" refers to physical acts of
adding value to reusable products or
recycled materials. This includes col-
lecting, processing, and manufacturing
products from recycled materials.
nents that were disposal-bound and sell
them back into the stream of com-
merce were included in the reuse sector.
Examples include: computer demanu-
facturers, pallet rebuilders, used motor
vehicle parts wholesalers, used mer-
chandise stores (thrift stores, including
antique shops), tire retreaders, and
materials exchanges. Because existing
data or complete contact lists (for survey
purposes) for many remanufacturing
establishments don't exist, the reuse
economic activity estimated by this
study can be considered to be very
conservative.
Q: How were business categories chosen?
A: Twenty-six business categories were
included as part of the analysis. These
twenty-six categories were selected and
defined so that they were consistent
with existing industrial classifications,
allowing data that already existed (e.g.,
U.S. Economic Census data on
employment, payroll, and revenue) to
be used in the study.
Q: Were repair shops included in the
reuse sector?
A: No. Establishments that provide repair
services to an owner of a product (such
as an automobile repair shop) were not
included in the reuse sector. Establish-
ments that recover products or compo-
Q: Did the study miss any segments of
the recycling or reuse industry?
A: The study was extremely comprehen-
sive in that it attempted to capture all
economic activity where recyclables or
reusable products were recovered and
sold or otherwise transferred from gen-
erators to recyclers (including "pre-
consumer" manufacturing scrap and
industrial byproduct materials not
classified as municipal solid waste).
However, the study does omit recycling
of materials for fuel use and instances
in which in-house manufacturing scrap
is re-injected by a manufacturer into its
internal manufacturing process at that
same facility.
www.epa.gov
The U.S. Recycling Economic Information Project was commissioned by
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and a number of states through a cooperative
agreement with the National Recycling Coalition in association with R.W. Beck, Inc.
• NATIONAL
/|\ RECYCLING
COALITION
Y INCl
www. n rc- recyc le. org

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Q: Some facilities use both recycled mate-
rial and virgin material to manufac-
ture their products - for example, a
paper mill that makes 30 percent recy-
cled-content products. How were
these establishments treated in the
study?
A: Establishments that have adjusted their
purchasing patterns and/or processing
lines to incorporate significant recycled
content in their products were consid-
ered to be in the recycling and reuse
industry. Economic activity for those
establishments was not downgraded or
otherwise apportioned by applying esti-
mates of national average recycled-con-
tent percentages, although it is impor-
tant to note that data from virgin-only
establishments were excluded.
However, data for establishments that
use both recovered and virgin material
were discounted to eliminate certain
activities that were patently not recy-
cling or reuse related, such as virgin
material preparation steps (e.g., debark-
ing trees and wood pulp production).
Similarly, haulers that collect both recy-
clables and solid waste were discounted
so that only the recyclables collection
portion of their respective businesses
were included.
Q: Did this study determine additional
economic activity ("impacts") created
by recycling?
A: This study measured the existing num-
ber of establishments engaged in recy-
cling and reuse, quantified the employ-
ees, wages paid and gross sales receipts
of those establishments, and developed
economic multipliers that can be used
to project future impacts associated
with increased diversion. Determining
the overall "impact" of recycling and
reuse would entail comparing the
entire U.S. economy in its current state
to a hypothetical U.S. economy that
had no recycling and reuse businesses.
Unfortunately, creating a model of
such an economy would be extremely
complex, and would be based on many
untested assumptions. Other
researchers have attempted to model
smaller and simpler economies (such as
a state's economy) with and without
the recycling and reuse industry and
have concluded that recycling and
reuse produces more economic activity
than an economy where all discards are
disposed of.
Q: Is the study taking credit for econom-
ic activity that would still exist in an
economy without recycling and reuse?
A: If recycling and reuse weren't prac-
ticed, much of the economic activity
associated with the recycling and reuse
industry would likely shift to addition-
al virgin material extraction and
increased solid waste disposal activities.
However, diverting materials and
products of value from disposal and
returning them to the stream of com-
merce in an efficient manner recovers
the value that has previously been
added to the virgin materials, con-
serves resources, improves industrial
competitiveness, and spurs additional
economic activity.
Q: Can economic modeling data from
this study be used to estimate impacts
for my state or locality?
A: No. Economic models are constructed
based on government data for specific
economic units such as a county, state,
or nation. An individual model's
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numerical results, therefore, can be
applied only to the specific economy it
was made for because each economy is
different. This was confirmed by the
differences between modeling results
for a series of state-level studies that
were done jointly with the national
study Attempting to apply the results
of the national model to a state or local
economy will produce inaccurate results.
Q: How accurate are the modeling results?
A: While the modeling techniques used in
the study represent the best available
tools for estimating economic effects, it
is thought that overall bottom-line
total modeling results may be inflated
as much as 15 percent due to limita-
tions inherent in the modeling process.
Modeling results for individual busi-
ness categories are not subject to this
error. Valid conclusions about the recy-
cling and reuse industry as a whole can
still be drawn as long as this inflation is
realized and accounted for.
Q: Are there any important questions that
this study has not answered, and
would additional study be useful?
A: This project measured the economic
effects of the recycling and reuse indus-
try at a single point in time. It does not
present a time series of data from
which one could discern trends. A reg-
ular re-application of the project
methodology (e.g., every three to five
years) would provide useful trend data
that would enable one to track changes
in the size and impact of the industry.
The study also found that there is not a
direct connection of the complete eco-
nomic benefits of recycling and reuse
to those who make the choice to divert
their waste products from disposal into
a recycling or reuse stream.
Quantifying costs and benefits that
accrue at various levels of the direct
recycling chain, at various levels of gov-
ernment, and to society in general
would be useful in stimulating discus-
sion about how to make recycling col-
lection programs and polices consistent
with the full economic benefits that
can be achieved.
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