Category: Newsletter

Download: San Diego Zero Waste Symposium

By Arthur R. Boone, Center For Recycling Research and Total Recycling Associates
The only other one-day, recycling-centered, educational event in California besides ours is the Zero Waste Symposium held in San Diego, this year at the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation in SE San Diego. Laura Anthony, daughter to Rick, is the program coordinator and 20 people each get 15-20 minutes to tell what’s “new and different” in their work; over 100 in attendance with a good lunch provided by Kitchens for Good.  I missed six of the speakers but there were a few gems worth noting. All of the presentations are now on line and retrievable. Definitely an upbeat day.

The US Business Council for Sustainable Development, headquartered in Austin, Texas, has started a “Materials Marketplace,” with its proprietary database making 176 transactions in two years between sending and receiving firms. State agencies in Ohio and TN are trying to start local versions of what sounds like what Bert Ball has done with LA Shares but has not yet been replicated elsewhere.

Darcy Shiber-Knowles from Dr. Bonner’s Company in Vista that makes soaps with imported materials (like coconut oil) gave a detailed explication of the virtue of fair trade principles and practices that assure the money gets to the little people in the sending countries.

Marina Kasa with Sony Electronics in Rancho Bernardo discussed the company’s goal of zero waste by 2050 with five year plans. Excellent talk; shrinking packaging is a big item for them. In response to a question about how Amazon seems to put the smallest item in the  biggest box, she said there have been meetings and that concern is on Amazon’s agenda now.

Briefer Notes: A small brew-pub gets spent grains to a pig farmer for animal feed. Powdered concrete from sawing operations can be fed into new concrete batches at a 1-2% of volume rate (similar to using fine grind old tires in retread making  mixes). Sustainable Surplus Exchange in Vista (about to change their name to REUSE4GOOD) mirrors the work of the Bay Area reuse depots but is open only on a few fixed days per year for teachers and others to come. J. Michael Huls, now an adjunct prof at Santa Monica City College, reminded us that the USA with 3% of the world’s population consumes 30% of the world’s resources. Reina Pereira from City of LA told of their new seven contracts for commercial collections ending the reign of 30 independent haulers; still waiting to see how this plays out – 65,000 accounts in America’s second largest city.

Subsidy Or Disposal Service Fee?

Subsidy Or Disposal Service Fee? That Is The Question.
By Daniel Knapp, Ph.D., CEO, Urban Ore, Inc., a Material Recovery Enterprise in Berkeley, California since 1980.

Hello Annie Sciacca and Sophie Mattson:

In response to your July 27, 2016 article in the Mercury News, “Why Are Bay Area Recycling Centers Closing — and Can Anything Save Them?”

I am a professional reuser and recycler with 35 years experience in California. The company I work for and with, Urban Ore, Inc., has survived many market fluctuations. Our primary business is reuse, but we also do lots of recycling. In 2015 we sent just 70 tons to landfill, less than 1% of the materials we accepted, upgraded, and returned to commerce.

Your article throws into sharp relief the extreme underlying unfairness that shackles our industry and prevents it from realizing highest recycling goals that are overwhelmingly popular both with voters and with elected politicians. This unfairness stems from dominance within the materials recovery industry by solid waste management ideology, despite this managerial elite’s having lost as much as 50% market share to recyclers in some areas (like Alameda County) in the last several decades.

“…the system is rigged to make sure wasters get theirs, no matter what. And recyclers are left to beg, or close their doors.”

To see how this unfairness works and is baked into our language, consider this sentence from your article:  “Recycling centers are increasingly dependent on the state’s subsidy program, but critics say the payouts are too slow to arrive and the subsidies aren’t adjusted quickly enough to reflect changing market conditions.”

I recognize that neither you nor your newspaper are responsible for this usage. But here’s the thing:

All recyclers compete with wasting industries for the same supply of materials. Wasting industries are, however, never paid with funds that are called subsidies. Instead, they are paid with funds derived from disposal service fees. What’s the difference?

The difference couldn’t be bigger or more consequential. Subsidies are mere handouts, temporary grants, while disposal service fees are monies paid to pay for the costs of making unwanted things go away, legally, plus a minimum 15% profit. But wasting industries accomplish this task by destroying value and creating pollution. Don’t recyclers make unwanted things go away legally too, and don’t they do it in a way that produces jobs and environmental benefits far beyond what wasters can provide?  Of course they do. Then why call monies paid to recyclers subsidies?  Why not call them disposal service fees instead?

There is no good reason at all for this imbalance, other than inertia, waste industry protectionism, and public confusion.

My dictionary tells me that a subsidy is “money granted to a charity…held to be in the public interest.”  The same dictionary says a fee is “…money regularly paid for continuing services.”  Grants can be withdrawn or at least not adjusted upward when money is tight, and that’s what’s behind all these recycling center closures and all the entrepreneurial pain that your article describes so well. But fees have to be paid and even increased as costs go up, regardless. So the system is rigged to make sure wasters get theirs, no matter what. And recyclers are left to beg, or close their doors. Could anything be more unfair, even dangerous to public health and safety?

With few exceptions, the solid waste profession controls both wasting and recycling all over California at the present time. I believe we need to “feel the Bern” in our field, and create a new management structure for recycling that recognizes that we recyclers are now the centerpiece of the disposal service industry, not an expensive add-on fueled by subsidies, and therefore that we deserve full payment for our work with the coin of the realm, disposal service fees.

Waste management is a sunset industry. The fact is that we recyclers have products to sell, and wasters have only liabilities to give future generations. Enacting this needed change will make the recycling industry even more of a formidable competitor than it has been since we hands-on recyclers started our revolution on or about Earth Day, 1970.

# # #

President’s Report, March 2017

By Laura McKaughan
As my first President’s Report of 2017, I want to take the time to formally welcome to the board the newly elected directors: Hilary Near, Steven Sherman and Rebecca Jewell. At our board meeting in February, I was energized by the enthusiasm and fresh ideas the newcomers brought to their very first meeting. I imagine 2017 will be a very productive and busy year for NCRA with ever more tours, mixers, events, and classes for our members to attend, to learn from, get inspired by, and to network, network, network!

The best first example of this is in the expanded offerings of NCRA’s 5th Annual Zero Waste Week. Our flagship event, the 22nd annual Recycling Update will be on Tuesday March 21 in Berkeley’s Freight and Salvage. Recycling Update will feature more than 25 industry professionals in one, action-packed day in which each presenter will be given only 10 minutes to bring attendees up to speed on topics from recyclable commodities markets, new recycling legislation, edible food recovery, innovations in compost applications, and campaigns to promote source reduction. Featured speakers include John Wick, Co-Founder of the Marin Carbon Project, Mark Murray, Executive Director of Californians Against Waste, Adam Lowy, Co-Founder of Move for Hunger, and Heidi Sanborn, Executive Director of the California Product Stewardship Council among many others. For a glance at some of the day’s speakers, click HERE and if you haven’t yet, REGISTER HERE for Recycling Update.

As was the case last year, employers are encouraged to drop off job announcements to the NCRA booth and job seekers are encouraged to visit the booth to learn more about positions available in their industry. Please plan to pack out any leftover notices so minimize paper waste.

The evening before on Monday March 20th, NCRA joins Zero Waste Marin and Marin Sanitary Service’s (MSS) in a screening of A Plastic Ocean. The film follows two explorers traveling to remote parts of the world and documenting the plastic pollution they find. Panel discussion to follow. The event is free and light refreshments will be served. RSVP here. There is also another film screening on Friday March 24 of Dogtown Redemption, a film which follows the local impact of the closure of Alliance Recycling Center in West Oakland. A panel will follow featuring the filmmaker and the event is free. For this movie screening, please RSVP here.

Lastly the 5th annual Zero Waste Youth Convergence will be held on Sunday March 19th in San Francisco. This event brings together high school and college students as well as young professionals in a full day dedicated to learning, visioning, organizing for Zero Waste. Please check their WEBSITE for more details and to register.

These events combined with the two tours during Zero Waste Week (both are sold-out), two webinars and one workshop, there are loads of events happening all week for NCRA members to take advantage of. We look forward to seeing you during Zero Waste Week and please EMAIL US if you have questions!

Gretchen Brewer, 1945 – 2017

Please join us for a
Memorial for Gretchen Brewer
Tuesday, March 21, 2017, 5-7pm
The Impact Hub, 4th Floor at the David Brower Center
2150 Allston Way at Oxford
Berkeley, CA

 — Hosted By Mary Lou Van Deventer, Dan Knapp, Susan Kinsella, Arthur Boone

Goodbye Gretchen!

RECYCLING PIONEER – GRETCHEN  BREWER, 1946-2017
By Mary Lou Van Deventer
In San Diego on Tuesday, February 21, 2017, pioneering recycler Gretchen Brewer transitioned out of this life.  As many people know, she had been using oxygen for chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD).  Then in late 2015, while helping a friend in hospice, she seriously wrenched her back.  By 2017 she was receiving physical therapy in a rehabilitation center and recently had been hoping to move back to her apartment.  But early Monday February 20, she was taken to an emergency room and later that day had a respiratory crisis.  She lost consciousness, and at about 8:30pm on Tuesday she slipped away.

Gretchen started her recycling career in Chicago, working at the Resource Center for Ken Dunn, whom she always called her mentor. Over the years she also worked for state governments in Massachusetts and New Mexico.  For a couple of years, she worked for the plastics industry, in hopes of remolding them from the inside. But when she wanted to carry away a muffin and was upset at being presented with a styrofoam clamshell instead of a paper bag, it was clear the job was no longer a good fit. Fiercely independent and creative, Gretchen returned to being a consultant for the next fifteen years. During this time, she did stellar buy-recycled procurement projects for the US Naval Stations in San Diego, which won a White House Closing-the-Circle award, and Hawaii. Most recently, she was writing a memoir of her innovative career for Urban Ore.

Gretchen is gone much too soon and will be deeply missed.

How Gretchen Mattered 
By Nancy VandenBerg
Gretchen Brewer identified what recycling needed, then pioneered solutions. Just two early examples remind us. In the early 1980s she described her Chicago collection program at a recycling congress in New Jersey. Programs everywhere grew from her experience. Despite the plastic industry´s bland assurance that its materials were too complex to recycle, in Boston she published the seminal explanation of one-resin packaging plastics. Before long, coding was introduced to aid householders and separation lines. Many, many others worked long and hard to construct the recycling industry over the decades, and so many of us depended on Gretchen´s insights to build our own programs. Her files fed our research. Her perspective shaped our direction. Her encouragement buoyed our commitment. Gretchen was a pivotal influence who never, ever stopped working to make this a cleaner world.

How Gretchen Facilitated Zero Waste 
By Mary Lou Van Deventer
When Gretchen was working as a consultant in San Diego, she introduced Dan Knapp to some Australians from Sydney, Melbourne, and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) in Canberra. They hired Dan to do some consulting, and on his first trip to the ACT in 1995 he brought back a governmentally endorsed plan called “No Waste by 2010.”  “No Waste” immediately became “Zero Waste” and spread across the country like a grassfire.  So Gretchen set up the contact that arguably began the Zero Waste movement in this country.

A Dear Friend  
By Susan Kinsella
I worked with Gretchen on her buy-recycled projects with the US Naval Stations in San Diego and Hawaii, and we were joyfully compatible as fellow night-owls. Often we were on the phone planning out the projects in the wee hours of the morning. So I was not surprised that she called me at 2:30 a.m. on February 20th from the ER. Over 30+ years, not only were we collaborators on ground-breaking recycling projects, but we also became close friends and trusted allies. She and her partner Wayne tried to teach me tai chi, but they were far more graceful than I in performing intricate ballet-like sequences together. Ever the researcher, Gretchen loved to watch all kinds of TV documentaries, especially on PBS. The nurses at the hospital had told us that the last sense to go is hearing, so I love knowing that Mary Lou Van Deventer was sitting by Gretchen’s bed reading stories to her about all the important and pioneering work that Gretchen had contributed to the world, up until just a few minutes before she passed.