Newsletter – Page 34 – Northern California Recycling Association

Waste Management Admits Failure At Recycling

So Waste Management Admits Failure At Recycling, But Who’s Really To Blame?

A Critical Review of the Aaron Davis’ June 20 Washington Post Attack on Environmentalists and Real Recyclers – American Recycling Is Stalling And The Big Blue Bin Is One Reason Why
By Daniel Knapp, CEO of Urban Ore, Inc., a Materials Recovery Facility now celebrating its 35th year in Berkeley, California, 7/7/15
Forty-five years after the first Earth Day jump-started recycling, companies like mine, Urban Ore, are one big reason why publicly traded wasting companies like Waste Management are losing market share and profitability. Our secret: we’re small, we’re nimble, and we focus on handling the disposal functions by producing quality resources from the municipal discard supply. In short, we’re just the opposite of the flawed recycling systems that are bringing down giants like Waste Management, Inc. When last counted, in 2004, there were about 56,000 of us, chipping away at the big waste companies’ market share. Eleven years later, there are probably more of us, and we’ve grown.

Meanwhile, the wasting giants have made some big bad bets, then pursued them with bullheaded efficiency, egged on by their corporate boardrooms. Big money is the driver in these transactions, not recycling markets. They bet that throwing investor money at highly automated but extremely dirty collection and sorting systems would best allow them to pursue their dreams of market domination. It worked for a while, but now we’re told it wasn’t sustainable. Aaron Davis of the Washington Post reports that at the highest levels of Waste Management, they appear to be giving up. He likes to reduce their key technology to “the big blue box,” but more experienced people know it as “single-stream.”

Single-stream’s essence is to combine all residential recyclables, mix them thoroughly, then try to separate them using automated systems developed for simpler feedstocks by the mining industry. Single-stream is notorious among real recyclers and perceptive environmentalists alike, many of whom not only saw through the industrial strategy from the first, but correctly forecast the outcomes now coming to pass.

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Aaron Davis blames environmentalists in general, and California environmentalists in particular, for Waste Management’s failures to make single-stream recycling profitable. He appears to have gotten most of his ideas from the Waste Management people he interviewed. But he didn’t talk to the competition at all, so what did he expect to hear but the backpedaling and evasiveness that he got? And why did the editorial staff of The Washington Post let him get this misinformation and disinformation into print?

The following quotes about single-stream’s failures show that Mr. Davis was wrong to blame environmentalists for the collapse of Waste Management’s recycling businesses. I’m indebted to environmentalist Lynne Pledger of Massachusetts Clean Water Action for most of these quotes, which she put out four years ago, in 2011 in a paper entitled
Concerns With Single Stream Recycling Collection (pdf).

Also, all bolds are mine. If you want to get to the gist of this refutation, read only the boldface in what follows.

Since Mr. Davis singles out California in his hit piece, let’s start with California environmentalist and recycling activist Portia Sinnott. She’s currently Editor of the monthly newsletter of the Northern California Recycling Association. She has been a NCRA Director for decades and served as its President for several years. More recently she has presided over a series of meetings called The Zero Waste Brain Trust that drew working recyclers from all over the state. One big takeaway from these meetings, Portia said two years ago, was that “…a growing number of waste professionals think the current design of MRFs — Material Recovery Facilities — are creating more garbage rather than less.”

The critique of single-stream goes back many years. As early as 2002, St. Paul, Minnesota’s Eureka Recycling study of competing collection and processing methods said that single-stream systems, “with high residual rates, expensive processing, and the lower quality in materials, …presents concerns…. The cost advantages and efficiencies of single-stream…disappear the more closely one looks at the later stages of the recycling process.” This was printed thirteen years ago in Resource Recycling, November 2002, one of several magazines that cover the recycling industry.

Just two weeks ago, Tim Brownell and Bryan Ukena, the current co-managers of Eureka Recycling, posted the following response to Mr. Davis’ thesis that waste companies are not to blame for their failed systems: “How dare WMI, Republic (formerly BFI) and the other largest garbage/landfilling companies in North America play victim to Single Stream recycling (?) Almost 15 years ago they began the steady march away from collecting recycling in separated streams, which allowed for the highest value and most environmental benefit from the materials. They claimed Single Stream systems were the future to recovering the most materials and to being the most efficient and environmentally effective programs possible for communities all across the country. It also happened to work well in their compacting garbage trucks. In Minnesota, due to these companies’ “vision” and influence, over 80% of all materials are now collected and processed in this manner. And NOW they have the gall to say the system is broken. ‘Not enough Profits’ is their mantra.” “Looking back 15 years ago we heard a very similar story from the multinational garbage companies as they purchased all of the local recycling companies, stating that recycling wasn’t working, and that they needed to raise fees for services by 40%.”

The big waste companies’ preference for single-stream undercut the finances of the companies that use recycled feedstocks. Clarissa Morawski wrote an influential report on single-stream for the Container Recycling Institute in 2009 that concluded “...the cost savings for a municipality from single-stream collection show up as cost increases for the processors and remanufacturers. The contaminants are thrown away by the paper mills. So, an item such as a plastic bottle that was recyclable when it was placed at the curb becomes trash by the time it is sorted out as a contaminant by the paper mill.”

In the same vein, Sacia and Simmons, writing in the TAPPI Journal, stated that “…Increased equipment wear, due primarily to glass and other abrasive contaminants, has increased maintenance costs (for paper makers) more than 300%. Pulper rejects, which are landfilled and consist primarily of plastics, tin, glass, and aluminum, have increased 800%. Other fiber-related costs have increased by 740%.”

These are business-busting numbers, and they came out nine years ago. But Waste Management and the other big wasting companies went ahead with single-stream anyway. Ideology triumphed over practicality.

What’s a self-respecting government to do? The Department of Ecology (pdf) of the State of Washington recommended in 2010 that local governments “switch the focus from collection to recovery…. Diverting materials from the garbage can to the point of collection when those materials end up disposed at a processor or remanufacturer…is not recycling or diversion,” they said. Many other governments agreed.

Manufacturers complained, too. In 2011, the Environmental Paper Network (pdf) asked its member companies to devote more time and energy to “…resolving the challenges created by single-stream collection programs that drive up the cost of recovered paper fiber and increase contamination.”

That same year, Lynne Pledger of Massachusetts Clean Water Action (pdf) wrote that single-stream was distorting markets worldwide. “Paper collected in a single-stream system is marketed to low-value uses like paperboard, much of which goes to overseas mills, rather than high-quality uses like fine printing and writing paper. This is having an adverse effect on domestic (paper) mills…and making it harder for those who want to purchase recycled paper to find it. (Also), …the container stream is contaminated with paper…. Overseas markets will accept contaminated material more readily than domestic markets, so that when world markets are robust there is less concern in the US about high-quality recyclables. But when markets go down which happens cyclically, it is the cleanest materials that find a home. Single-stream materials are excluded or marketed at a significant loss.”

Single-stream is only one of several wasting industry technologies now causing trouble for big waste companies’ sunk assets. In 2010, I wrote in a piece for the newsletter of the Northern California Recycling Association (NCRA) about…a sad list of waste company versions of “recycling” such as garbage composting, dirty MRFing, single-stream collection, and Alternative Daily Cover, or ADC, that systematically waste materials that could easily be conserved and used. From an operations perspective, they all look like greenwashing to my jaundiced but experienced eye. Garbage in, garbage out.”

NCRA is on the worldwide web, along with several other big recycling-related NGOs such as the Berkeley Ecology Center and Eureka Recycling. Mr. Davis could have found a veritable symphony of these kinds of statements among real, feet on the ground recyclers had he bothered to look. But he didn’t, instead only quoting Patty Moore, a respected California consultant (and long-time NCRA member) closely associated with the plastics industry. Why would only Patty Moore get to stand in for tens of thousands of recyclers and environmentalists?

Maybe because plastics are so hard to recycle effectively. In their July 2015 newsletter, The Container Recycling Institute reproduced an interesting article from the Winona, Minnesota Daily News about a study being done there by longtime recycling and environmental activist Ann Morse. The study was designed to find out just what people are mistakenly putting into the big blue bins in that rural county. More than 200 large samples were collected, their contents sorted and weighed. It turns out that the biggest Blue Bin contaminant by weight (and certainly by volume as well) is….unrecyclable plastics! Here’s the quote: “Nonrecyclable plastic was by far the largest contributor to the garbage bin, which slowly filled with things like pencil cases, plastic cups, chip bags, newspaper bags and grocery bags. While some bags are made of recyclable plastic, ordinary recycling facilities can’t handle them, Morse explained, so they should only be recycled in special collection areas in stores. Whenever recyclables are placed in a plastic bag, the whole bag is discarded as waste, which defeats the purpose of recycling in the first place. Paper bags, on the other hand, can be recycled along with their recyclable contents.”

So I would say Waste Management has itself, and to some extent the plastics industry, to blame for its recycling failures. Not consumers. Not environmentalists. Not working recyclers. Just them.

For residents of Washington DC, I’d say you’re getting half-truths at best from your beloved local newspaper, at least when it comes to recycling.

For those of us working to make that Zero Waste future happen – no burn, no bury, WMI’s failure is clearly an opportunity. That’s because we perform the same task of legal disposal for unwanted goods, but we do it better and more profitably because we focus on quality production from start to finish.

We don’t like to mix unlikes. We like order better than disorder when it comes to materials handling. We think that system designs that degrade materials unnecessarily should be replaced by systems designed by people who understand how to use source separation to produce high quality resources and jobs.

This transition to a true Zero Waste future is job #1 for the new millennium, in my opinion.

How2Recycle Labeling System

By Liz Bortolotto, NCRA News Contributor
How2Recycle is a nationwide labeling standard for consumer products that identifies if the package is recyclable or not. With more than 37 companies on board – such as McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Kellogg and Proctor and Gamble, How2Recycle plans to become the standard for recycling labeling in the U.S. and Canada. A project of GreenBlue’s Sustainable Packaging Coalition, How2Recycle was developed to reduce consumer confusion around recycling with a clear and consistent recycling label. It provides companies with an easy way to conform to the Federal Trade Commission’s Green Guides. While several other recycling labels and symbols exist, the How2Recycle Label claims to be the only one that communicates recyclability across all material types and gives explicit directions to consumers to influence their recycling behavior. It also specifies when a package component is not recyclable.

The label first appeared on packages in late 2011, including a variety of Kirkland products from Costco Wholesale, Clorox’s Scoop Away products, Minute Maid juice products, 95% of Seventh Generations’ products, Target’s private-label brands such as Up&Up, Market Pantry, Archer Farms and Simply Balanced and General Mills’ Green Giant, Betty Crocker, Chex, Yoplait and all of its cereals.

Companies are charged an annual fee of $2,000 to $6,000 for access to the How2Recycle label which includes support and periodic reviews. There is an additional set up fee. Locally, Alameda County’s StopWaste agency offers funding for companies headquartered or with significant operations in Alameda County to join How2Recycle up to $4,000 for the first year of membership. Sponsorships are also available for companies labeling polyethylene bags, wraps and other films.

While the label does provide nationwide consistency, there are vast differences in recycling collection among waste haulers nationwide. How2Recycle stresses that it is important for people to be familiar with what recycling is offered in their communities. There are numerous cases where a label might identify packaging as recyclable but that is not actually the case in a specific community. Conversely, there are numerous cases where a label identifies a package as not recyclable that actually is because only 20% of people nationwide are able to include it with their recycling. These situations should diminish as more of the U.S. population has access to full recycling collection.

Why You Need Lawyers

MOORE’S MUSINGS
A semi-monthly feature, exclusive to NCRA News, from NCRA general counsel and board member John Moore, concerning recent legal decisions relating in some manner to Zero Waste.

WHY YOU NEED LAWYERS
By John D. Moore, NCRA Vice President and Legal Counsel, Henn, Etzel & Moore, Inc.
A few months back I reported about a 3-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision rejecting the constitutional Commerce Clause challenge to Alameda County’s drug EPR program (BTW- Longs in uptown Oakland does not accept take-back). Big pharma had asserted that the County ordinance impermissibly regulated out of state conduct. Since the ordinance expressly only applies to companies that sell drugs in the county and applies even-handily to such companies whether based inside or outside the county and state, I thought to myself: pretty obvious and the Court got it right.

But this week an 11-judge panel of the same Court (not including any of the judges in the pharma case) came to an opposite conclusion involving sales of fine art in St. Francis Foundation v. Christie’s et al. A California statute imposes a 5% royalty, payable to the artist, when a work of fine art is re-sold. The purpose is so when someone who bought an Andy Warhol print of a soup can for $10 from the artist when young, re-sells it many years later for $10 million, the artist, now successful, is rewarded. The California statute expressly applies only when a seller resides in California or the sale transaction occurred in California. Like the pharma case, when applied within this structure, out of state and in-state art sellers are treated the same.

In this new case, the plaintiffs (artists or their estates) sued three large agents for resellers of fine art, Christies, Sothebys and Ebay for not making the required royalty payment. Plaintiffs claimed unpaid royalties on sales both in California and in other states. Without distinguishing the claims about the in-state sales from the out-of-state ones, the Court decided that the California statute does violate the Commerce Clause because the legislation can apply to out-of-state conduct, which the Commerce Clause precludes. What? How can that be?

So the Court made up a hypothetical: what if a California resident living part time in New York buys fine art in North Dakota? This transaction has no relationship to California other than the residency of the buyer is there. From this hypothetical – not the reported facts of this case, the Court summarily concluded, “We easily conclude that the royalty requirement, as applied to out-of-state sales by California residents, violates the dormant Commerce Clause.” Without further explanation.

The Court did not reveal how the transactions subject to this lawsuit were analogous to this hypothetical. The Court offered no further explanation about how the California law regulated conduct out of state. The remainder of the opinion is a discussion about how the part of the statute applicable to the residence of the seller is legally severable from the rest of the statute that regulates California sales transactions, so that the former is effectively stricken while the rest remains valid.

Appellate Court judges and justices tend to be more result-oriented and less objectively analytical than they might confess in public. The result is either popular or it is not. Roe v. Wade, for example, is founded on a constitutional principle not actually found in the constitution. As another example, the Supreme Court case establishing that the Commerce Clause applies to solid waste because solid waste is an “article of interstate commerce”, never explains why that might be so, or what law it was relying upon to so state. Why a Court protects artists and competing waste haulers but not drug companies is anybody’s guess. I mention this only to highlight the unpredictability of the outcome of disputes that are litigated. But I can’t really complain, it creates work for me.

Stars Of Zero Waste

Report Back From The US Zero Waste Business Council 2015 Conference In Los Angeles
By Laura McKaughan, NCRA President and Principal Consultant, Envirolutions LLC, 5/14/15
From May 5-7, I attended the 3rd Annual Conference of the US Zero Waste Business Council (USZWBC) in downtown Los Angeles. As a promotional partner, NCRA members were eligible for a 20% discount on conference registration, and NCRA graciously provided for additional support for me to attend on our behalf. The opening day included a workshop on Zero Waste efforts in colleges and universities and featured select schools from around the country. Even this small workshop was sponsored by four different companies but soon enough it was made clear the recycling bins, bags and equipment the sponsors were promoting were instrumental to the success of the programs. Other offerings on the first day included a Zero Waste 101 workshop, a Zero Waste professional training and a tour of Loyola Marymount University’s Sustainability Program. Apparently there was an opening reception for select members but no opening reception for all attendees.

The first full day of conference programming featured the Mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, speaking about LA’s Sustainable City pLAn. (Yes, that is how the plan is titled “pLAn”.) Garcetti stated the diversion rate for the City is 76%, the highest of any of the largest cities in the country. No time was allotted for Q&A though undoubtedly many had questions about how Los Angeles could achieve this feat without collecting food scraps on any notable scale. The Mayor also spoke about some of the other initiatives in the PLAn and was especially enthusiastic about increasing the number of public trash cans dramatically so Angelinos would have convenient alternatives to littering.

Enrique Zaldivar, Director of the LA Bureau of Sanitation, provided background about the formation of the PLAn and how instrumental the Mayor was in this process. He also said he wished LA could reach higher waste diversion voluntarily rather than by mandate, but did not go into any detail about the issues he perceived with mandatory requirements. Matt Petersen, the first ever Chief Sustainability Officer for the city – formerly President of Global Green, spoke about how the PLAn addresses the three prongs of sustainability: the environment, social equity and economics. He delved into some of the 14 topic areas, noting a strong focus on increasing solar capacity, reducing water use and improving the City’s air quality – still among the worst in region. Petersen admitted LA currently imports nearly 90% of their water and that of this, 50-60% is used on ornamental lawns. The City’s goal is to locally source 50% of the water necessary to run daily functions by 2035 and more immediately to reduce water consumption 20% by 2017 by converting 1000 low income homes to be “water wise”.

On the Zero Waste front, LA has established an ambition goal of 90% waste diversion by 2025 and 95% by 2035. They also have set a goal of 60% reduction in GHG emissions by 2035 and 80% by 2050. I am cautiously optimistic about these lofty goals, and am surely not alone in hoping these great gains will not be over-reliant on dirty MRFs, which results in material streams with diminished values and unsavory working conditions.

Unlike NCRA’s Recycling Update or CRRA’s annual conference, the USZWBC specifically targeted businesses and presented speakers and break-out sessions most relevant for them. Additionally, there were fewer concurrent sessions offered so if the topic discussed in the ballroom wasn’t of interest, for the most part there weren’t other alternatives. That said, many of the businesses about their successes in Zero Waste had global impact and it was inspiring to imagine that their massive amounts of discards were thankfully being managed responsibly. Marialyce Pedersen, Senior Representative of Corporate Citizenship for the Walt Disney Company, gave a noteworthy talk about Disney’s sustainability efforts over the last several decades. They have received several WRAP awards, were certified as a Zero Waste business, were a founding member of the USZWBC, and were awarded the 2014 Governor’s Economic and Environmental Leadership Award for their California operations. Among some of their more novel efforts, Disney has eliminated the mailing of 26 million catalogs by offering them on-line instead and has created innovative programs for recycling and reusing costumes, movie and TV show sets for use in other productions.

Elisa Varela, Printing Supplies Specialist from Hewlett Packard, shared their success in recycling over 35 million units of e-waste by 2013 and assisting in establishing 3,700 drop-off centers in Staples stores throughout the nation. Greg Kurkjian, Vice President of Retail Sales, IFCO Systems, spoke about the reusable shipping containers they sell which enable the food service industry to save money in shipping costs, protect fragile products from damage such as eggs, and result in a huge reduction in waste and greenhouse gas emissions associated with these shipments.

As the lunchtime speaker Fedele Baucio, CEO/Cofounder, Bon Appétit Management Company, gave an inspirational speech illuminating their efforts to incorporate sustainability and improve the working conditions for farmers. Specifically he spoke of the plight of migrant tomato farmers in Florida and his work to draw awareness to their dismal working conditions. He also spoke about their recent work to prioritize food recovery and finding local non-profits to redistribute their uneaten food.

Other notable presentations on the second day included Michelle “Mitch” Hedlund from Recycle Across America, who spoke about the need for universal bin signage. She has a very successful campaign utilizing celebrities to promote recycling and use of her signage. While her design was not earth-shattering, it struck a chord with many in the room about the need of having color-coded bins and clear, imaged-based signage. She later brought in actor Elvis Nolasco of ABC’s American Crime, to discuss why he got involved in the campaign. Though impressive by star power alone, this was the least provocative component to the programming in my opinion. Josh Prigge, Sustainability Manager for Fetzer Vineyards, shocked the audience when he announced 100% of the grapes they grow at their vineyards is organic – sold under their Bonterra label as well as a component grape in many of their Fetzer labeled wines.

Representatives from Toyota Motors North America and Kellogg Garden Products spoke on Thursday. Kathy Kellogg-Johnson, Director of Sustainability for Kellogg Garden Products, said that by putting 3” of composted material or mulch on top of the soil, water demand will decrease water by as much as 30%, which is exactly what the governor has mandated for water reduction statewide. Ryan McMullan, Manager of Environmental & Safety for Toyota, explained how the concept of “Mottainai” has been instrumental in cultivating environmental ethics within Toyota. Mottainai is Japanese term with no exact English translation which roughly translates to mean the regret experienced when something is not valued for its intrinsic value and is therefore “wasted”. Though Toyota does use waste-to-energy, they appropriately do not consider this to be a form of recycling and therefore it is not counted toward their diversion rate. They measure sustainability through several different metrics including their 3R rate (amount reduced, reused, and recycled out of total generation) and their Generation Rate, which does not include recycling because it is still a stream that has been generated and therefore not avoided.

Overall I am happy I attended the conference, and would encourage more NCRA members to take advantage of the discount in future years. There were speakers who had not been given the opportunity to present at other recycling conferences I have attended so this was refreshing. The conference was especially relevant for those interested in bringing businesses up to speed with Zero Waste goals and for businesses representatives interested in learning about how other companies have made strides toward Zero Waste. Hopefully the number of USZWBC certified businesses will grow even larger over time and we will continue to see the expanded influence of this very worthwhile organization.

Read more… USZWC 2015 Conference Program: http://www.uszwbc.org/2015conference/program