America Recycles Day
Yesterday, November 15th was America Recycles Day - how was your engagement program?
In 1997, the National Recycling Coalition working with the National Keep America Beautiful Program, held the first America Recycles Day to raise awareness about the importance of recycling and challenge all of us to make a personal pledge to commit to recycling and buying products made from recycled materials.
So did your ESG program leverage this day to inform and engage your residents to recycle? Is it even important for us to recycle? Why do we encourage recycling anyway?
There is no doubt that we focus a lot on energy, and rightfully so. Our energy use is a significant driver of greenhouse gas emissions. To positively impact the climate, we must focus on both operational and embodied energy, reducing the carbon intensity of that energy. We have also covered the impact of water and its hidden carbon footprint in other posts. But what about the waste stream?
Recycling has the same positive impact of reducing energy use as manufacturing products from recycled material uses less energy than manufacturing products from raw materials. The US Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that 42% of US GHG emissions are associated with the acquisition and provision of goods and food produced in the United States. Those emissions include what happens after we are done with those goods.
The following graphic from the EPA shows the life cycle of white paper and the impact of recycling:
Not only does recycling reduce the number of raw materials needed, but it also reduces the impact of landfills. So why would that concern us?
Landfills introduce both environmental issues as well as environmental justice issues. The aroma is unmistakable if you have visited a landfill or just driven near the area on a warm summer day. That odor is a product of anaerobic decomposing. A significant byproduct of anaerobic decomposition is methane, a greenhouse gas 34 times as potent as carbon dioxide - meaning it has 34 times the warming potential of an equal amount of carbon dioxide. In the United States, landfills are the third largest emitters of methane. But it gets better, in addition to the off-gassing, landfills are also often the source of hazardous waste materials that can contaminate water supplies; they tend to result in increased noise and smoke as well, and they are a significant breeding site for insects and other rodents, which can carry disease and pose other nuisances.
Because no one wants to live next to a landfill, they tend to be located near minority and low-income areas, as these communities have fewer resources to challenge the development of a landfill. Think that is an exaggeration? Take a look at Houston, where ‘all five of the city-owned landfills, six of the city’s eight waste incinerators, and three of the four privately owned landfills are located in predominately black neighborhoods. From the 1930s until 1978, 82% of all solid waste disposed of in Houston was dumped in Black neighborhoods, while Black residents were just 25% of the population” (source). This isn’t just a Houston issue; the pattern is consistent across the United States - landfills tend to be located near low-income or predominately minority neighborhoods.
Landfills also tend to come with health issues for those living nearby and depress property values. A 2016 study by the International Journal of Epidemiology showed a strong association between elevated lung cancer rates and other deaths and hospitalizations for respiratory disease for populations residing within 5 km of landfills. (source). The University of Colorado in 2021 concluded that large landfills decrease the value of adjacent land by an average of 12.9%, an impact that seems consistent amongst all high-volume landfills (source).
Diverting waste streams from landfills reduces the need for landfills. An important consideration not only for all of the negative impacts already noted but also because we are literally running out of space for new landfills. 292.4 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) is produced every year in the United States, a number that is steadily climbing year over year (source). While we only represent 4% of the world’s population, we account for 12% of the world’s trash. As a society, we gravitate towards disposable and single-use. We purchase food but only consume 60% of it, sending 40% of it from our grocery store to the trash without ever eating it (source). Americans have adopted a throw-away society; the problem is there is no such place as “away.”
There is a solution, however, and that is diverting that waste stream. One of the most effective strategies is recycling. This is nothing new; we have taught our children to reduce, reuse, and recycle for decades. But why don’t they when they grow up?
There is little dispute that when we use recycling, those materials sent to recycling become raw materials for new products. They are a resource and thus have value. We can easily demonstrate that there is less of an environmental impact when we source recycled content to produce something instead of using virgin material. If less waste is heading to landfills, we do not have to build new landfills at the same continual pace. Reduced need for new landfills feeds into reduced environmental justice issues and fewer communities battling new landfills being located near their homes.
This brings us to America Recycles Day…… and why it should provide an opportunity to provide education and engagement around your recycling program.
One opportunity is the issue of contamination. Since 2018, China changed its contamination thresholds from 25% when purchasing recycled raw materials to .5%. The impact was immediate and resulted in recycling contamination being a significant issue. The solution is simple, residents need to recycle correctly - but recycling correctly does not mean placing the item in a container and “hoping” it is the correct container - sometimes called “wish-cycling.”
To address contamination, Keep America Beautiful uses 3 C’s to improve recycling:
Convenience - Containers must be placed at locations that make it convenient for residents to participate. Color is a commonly used tactic to help identify what container is for what.
Communication - What does your container tell your residents about its purpose? Does the signage help clarify - or is it complicated? Your program should educate residents and employees about your goals, where recycling is, and what can be recycled. Communication has to be simple and reinforce your program and should be reinforced with educational events. Communication should reinforce your culture; it should amplify the cause. This also means tracking and communicating results.
Cause - The cause needs to be embraced by the culture of the community and the organization that manages and owns the community. From the top down, embracing the cause of recycling can be an essential step in effective, proper recycling. This is a community-wide issue, and the solution requires organization and community-wide engagement.
You can obtain additional resources on the Keep America Beautiful website: www.kab.org/programs/ard/ - including online tools to help plan for future events (online tools).
You can help reduce the impact of the built environment by sharing this blog with your peers. Together we can impact the 39% of greenhouse gasses attributed to the built environment. It starts with awareness, and we succeed with teamwork.
Stay well!
Chris Laughman is the ThirtyNine Blog author, a blog dedicated to reducing the built environment’s impact. When not blogging, Chris is helping residents, clients, and investors reduce their energy, carbon, waste, and water impact as the Senior Director of Energy and Sustainability for Greystar. Our team’s insight into the utility consumption of our managed and owned portfolios provides insight into opportunities to identify and mitigate risk. We leverage innovation and experience to ignite solutions with real impacts while tracking performance, ensuring the trendline stays laser-focused on the goal. We in real estate have a tremendous opportunity to make a difference in the built environment. Standing shoulder to shoulder, we will get this done. I can be contacted at: chris.laughman@greystar.com for questions, concerns, or collaboration.
The opinions expressed in this blog are my own.
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