MSW Management | Editorial

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By John H. Skinner

In October, the EPA issued the latest installment of its annual characterization of municipal solid waste (MSW) practices: Municipal Solid Wastes in the United States: 2005 Facts and Figures. This report presents data on MSW generation rates and management practices from 1960 through 2005 and chronicles the considerable progress made in solid waste management over that period. However, it also presents a sobering view of the lethargic progress that has been made in the areas of recycling and energy recovery over the past five years. Recycling limped up from 29% to 32% of waste generation from 2000 to 2005, while combustion with WTE actually declined from 14.2% to 13.6% during those five years. From the EPA data it is clear that outstanding growth of recycling and WTE that occurred during the 1980s and 1990s has stagnated in the early years of the 21st century.

In 2003, SWANA’s International Board of Directors approved an important policy document setting forth a strategy for significantly increasing the rates of municipal solid waste recycling and energy recovery in North America. Entitled Pushing the Envelope on Waste Reduction and Recovery (available on the SWANA Web site, www.swana.org) the document concluded that significant progress in waste recycling and energy recovery could not be achieved without a series of incentives specifically designed to encourage across-the-board increases in recycling and energy recovery levels. The report then made a series of policy recommendations that would remove barriers to and provide incentives for achieving those higher levels of solid waste recycling and energy recovery.

Let me summarize the six policy recommendations and see what has been accomplished and what still needs to be done if we are serious about increasing recycling and energy recovery levels in North America.

Recommendation 1: Encourage more extensive product stewardship by product designers, manufacturers, retailers, and consumers. Product stewardship deals with the actions that should be taken to provide for waste management of a product at the end of its useful life. That includes: A) Actions to improve the design and manufacture of products to reduce the quantity or toxicity of product waste and facilitate product reuse and recycling; and B) actions to establish programs to collect, process, and reuse or recycle products when they are discarded.

The Product Stewardship Institute (PSI) has been very active in encouraging voluntary product stewardship activities in a number of industries, including paint, carpets, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, tires, and mercury-containing products. PSI works with these sectors developing memoranda of understanding and provides policy assistance coordination and education.

In the area of consumer electronics, a number of the computer manufacturers have instituted take-back and recycling programs for discarded computers, with Dell in the forefront providing free take-back for its products. Other manufacturers, such as HP and IBM, provide take-back and recycling for a fee. Five states and several Canadian provinces have passed electronic scrap recycling legislation, and several bills have been introduced in the US Congress. The National Recycling Coalition has been working with the Beverage Packaging Environment Council to develop strategies to increase recycling of beverage containers. While specific proposals have not come out of this effort yet, this is an important area to focus on, especially in the area of plastic containers.

As the EPA reports, plastic container recycling is very low (9%), while overall plastics recycling is a dismal 6%. In accord with the next recommendation, beverage producers and container manufacturers should certainly increase the use of recycled materials in their products. Product manufacturers and designers must continue to take on new responsibilities to reduce the adverse impact of their products. However, all participants in a product life cycle—including retailers, consumers, and waste managers—have important roles to play working in cooperation with product manufacturers and designers to develop the most workable and cost-effective solutions.

Recommendation 2: Expand efforts by federal, state, and provincial governments to develop markets for recycled materials and recovered energy. SWANA believes that federal, state, and provincial governments should take a leadership role in the creation and development of markets for products made from materials and energy derived from solid waste. Markets and market development are all about the economics of supply and demand. Given the regional, national, and international scope of recycling markets, market development needs to come from the top down and is most effective when carried out at the federal, state, and provincial level.

All governmental agencies and departments should create preferential procurement programs for products and energy derived from solid waste. There are substantial opportunities for agencies to procure a myriad of products containing recovered materials, including office supplies containing recycled paper, landscaping materials containing compost, and renewable energy recovered through WTE and landfill gas recovery systems. Actions by local jurisdictions and private companies can supplement and complement those of the federal, state, and provincial agencies.

Recommendation 3: Provide financial incentives for investments in recycling, composting, and the use of recovered materials. The Energy Bill passed by the US Senate in 2005 included a 15% investment tax credit for purchases of recycling equipment. The provision, entitled Recycling Investment Saves Energy (RISE), was a landmark of legislation because the Senate recognized for the first time that recycling needs to become part of the nation’s energy strategy. Unfortunately, similar legislation had not been introduced in the House of Representatives, so the RISE provision was not included in the final Energy Policy Act that was enacted into law.

A similar bill was introduced in the Senate again in 2006 but did not move forward. SWANA supported the bill but believes the legislation should be expanded to include equipment for composting operations and that provisions should be added that would provide financial incentives for local government recycling efforts. Recycling caucuses have been formed in both the House and Senate, and hopefully these groups will be more successful with the new Congress in 2007.

Recommendation 4: Include waste-to-energy and conversion technologies in renewable portfolio standards and green power programs. Capital improvements at WTE facilities, resulting from the Clean Air Act regulations, now ensure that WTE is one of the cleanest sources of power in the world. As the EPA has reported, WTE plants are a clean, reliable, renewable source of energy that produce electricity with less environmental impact than almost any other source of electricity. All of these changes are a result of the significant financial investment made by owners and operators of WTE facilities in response to the Clean Air Act air maximum achievable control technology (MACT) standards promulgated by the EPA. Also, in accordance with the federal law, WTE ash is tested under the EPA’s Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure, and years of testing ash from every WTE facility in the country has proved that the ash is not toxic and is safe for disposal and reuse.

Based on all of these significant environmental improvements, policy makers can feel confident in encouraging the use of WTE as a clean renewable source of energy. Fifteen states define WTE as renewable power, including California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington. While there are other states that have not included WTE in their list of renewable fuels, the federal government has consistently defined WTE as renewable, most recently in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. As federal, state, and provincial governments pass legislation deregulating the electricity markets, they should establish renewable portfolio standards that will require electricity generators to provide a certain percentage of their power from renewable fuels, and WTE should be given full credit as renewable energy supplies.

Recommendation 5: Encourage the recovery and use of landfill gas by reinstating federal tax credits and through renewable portfolio standards and green power programs. In the 2005 Energy Policy Act, the US Congress enacted a federal tax credit for the production of electricity from WTE units or from methane gas produced by the decomposition of solid waste in landfills. Under this landmark legislation WTE and landfill methane gas have been classified as renewable fuels and are eligible for tax credits similar to other renewable fuels, such as wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass.

Unfortunately, in order to qualify for the tax credit, the new WTE or landfill gas recovery units must be placed in service by the end of 2007. This is too short of a period for many new landfill gas projects to come online and is impossibly short for the construction of new WTE units. As a member of the Renewable Business Alliance, SWANA will work the trade associations for the other renewable fuels to seek an extension of the tax credit by the US Congress.

Recommendation 6: Support technology transfer and research and development efforts that have the potential to significantly increase waste recovery rates. There are a number of promising new technologies that have significant potential for increasing the recovery of materials and energy from municipal solid wastes. Two that merit special consideration are bioreactor landfills and conversion technologies.

In 2004, the EPA issued a regulation that would allow states to carry out research and development on bioreactor landfills. This regulation, referred to as the RD&D Permit Rule, has withstood a court challenge, and a number of states have now adopted it. Operating landfills as bioreactors by adding and recirculating liquids can increase methane recovery rates over shorter periods of time. Through accelerated waste biodegradation, bioreactor landfills can also increase waste settlement, thereby extending landfill life, and can reduce long-term care requirements through enhanced waste stabilization. Over the next several years, valuable data on bioreactor performance will be forthcoming as more research is carried out under the RD&D Permit rule.

Because of high energy costs, there has been a renewed interest in conversion technologies, such as hydrolysis, anaerobic digestion, gasification, and plasma arc, that can convert solid wastes into industrial biochemicals and fuels. Most of these conversion technologies are currently at the laboratory or pilot stages of development, with very few commercial operations in North America. SWANA believes that a program of research and development on these new technologies could be is very helpful to achieving higher levels of solid waste recovery.

Through its specialty symposia, annual conference, workshops, and publications, SWANA will continue to disseminate information on recycling and energy recovery to its members and other solid waste professionals. On February 26–27, 2007, in Tampa, FL, SWANA will hold its recycling and special waste symposium. “Thinking Outside the Blue Box” will highlight innovative strategies to take recycling to higher and higher levels. Then, on May 21–23 in Miami, SWANA will co-sponsor NAWTEC, the North American Waste-to-Energy Conference, along with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Integrated Waste Services Association, and Colombia University.

SWANA believes that the recommendations in Pushing the Envelope on Waste Reduction and Recovery remain as valid today as when they were written, and we continue to urge federal, state, and provincial legislators and policy makers, local governmental officials, and private industry representatives to support them. SWANA believes that there is significant opportunity to increase recycling and energy recovery levels by working across the board and encouraging recycling and energy recovery in many forms, wherever it can be achieved in an environmentally and economically sound manner.

John H. Skinner, Ph.D., is the executive director and the chief executive officer of The Solid Waste Association of North America.

MSW - March/april 2007