It’s been more than six months since the EPA’s venerable Office of Solid Waste morphed into the Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery (ORCR), a name change “…reflecting the breadth of the responsibilities/authorities that Congress provided to EPA under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the primary authorizing statute.”
According to the EPA, the ORCR has has consolidated the six division of the old OSW into three, designed to increase the agency’s focus on resource conservation and materials management while continuing to maintain its role in waste management regulatory and implementation programs. The reorganization also:
• consolidates the four major areas of the Resource Conservation Challenge (RCC) under one division;
• combines data collection and data analysis activities, thus streamlining operations to better coordinate the EPA’s efforts to analyze and present the benefits of its program; and
• consolidates waste-to-energy activities in one division and branch.
The three divisions in the new organization are: the Materials Recovery and Waste Management Division, the Resource Conservation and Sustainability Division, and the Program Implementation and Information Division. More information is available at http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/basicinfo.htm
An early evidence of change came in a recent presentation by Rick Brandes, chief of the OCRC’s Energy Recovery Branch, seeking to relieve the polarization in the waste-to-energy debate, starting with a terminology change that replaces WTE with Energy Recovery.
Acknowledging that increasing climate change concerns have forced analysis of comprehensive mitigation strategies with the result that energy recovery is evolving as a major player, Brandes points out that there is a growing internal consensus on role of energy recovery as a renewable resource—recognized by being part of current energy/climate change legislation. Brandes offers the following for consideration:
Summary of Hypothetical Materials Management Approaches
(Million Metric Tons CO2 Equivalent Per Year)
Reduce packaging use by 50% | 147 |
Extend the life of personal computers by 50% | 51 |
Recycle all construction materials | 160 |
Increase national MSW recycling rate to 50% | 36 |
Compost all food scraps | 21 |
Combust all landfilled MSW | 73-136 |
Capture all methane at US landfills | 67 |
(World total emissions (2007) = 27,000 MMTCO2E
(U.S. total emissions (2007) = 7,280 MMTCO2E)
Inventory
Tasked by senior management to determine what energy recovery potential from hazardous and nonhazardous secondary materials is available, Brandes’ Branch found that MSW is the only materials stream that contains sufficient potential energy to be important, as much as 2% to 4% of the nation’s electrical energy demand:
Inventory of Energy Recovery Opportunities
Energy Recovery Opportunities | Material Available for Recovery (million tpy) | Potential Energy Recovery/Saving (billion Btus/year) | Percent of US Energy Production |
MSW | | | |
BioCycle Data | 266 | 2,729,160 | 3.90% |
Franklin Data | 137 | 1,405,620 | 2.01% |
Biomass, Ag Residue | 100 | 1,000,000 | 1.43% |
Biomass, Animal Manure/Gaseous Fuels | 35 | 420,000 | 0.60% |
C&D, Land-Clearing Debris | 27 | 394,200 | 0.56% |
C&D, Wood, Building Materials | 19.6 | 353,000 | 0.50% |
Landfill Methane Gas | N/A | 144,000 | 0.21% |
Coal Combustion Products, Fly Ash | 20 | 80,000 | 0.11% |
Biomass, Pulp and Paper Residues | 3 | 30,000 | 0.043% |
What intrigues me is the way Brandes looks to bridge the gap by suggesting that the issue is not one of recycling versus energy production, but one of finding material management strategies that cut down on landfilling.