Fascinating discussion on garbage and recycling policy featured on the Tuesday, February 21 episode of the Diane Rehm Show. The takeaway: the U.S. is falling behind other OECD nations in the scope and effectiveness of our recycling policies. Emerging as the most ecologically sound solution are policies that seek to transfer responsibility for disposal of consumed products from the taxpayer onto product producers. In broader terms, a shift is required from the current "cradle to grave" approach of manufacturing and disposal to a "cradle to cradle" approach that reuses discarded products and components thereof in lieu of landfill disposal.
Allen Hershkowitz of the Natural Resources Defense Council:
"[Japan and Europe] limit the amount of material that goes to landfill. They have landfill taxes...[and] a policy called producer responsibility which requires the consumer products companies to help pay for the infrastructure to collect the material and send it to a recycling facility. Right now, municipal waste is [entirely] financed by taxpayers or consumers...Producer responsibility rationalizes the price signals, and helps support municipal programs financially and directs more material to recycling."
"[The Japanese] prohibit the deposit into landfills of certain types of plastics and paper. Their bottles are standardized size so that they could be refilled. They combine deposit laws with producer responsibility laws with bans of certain material going to landfills."
Another innovative solution are "bottle bills", as currently exist in 10 U.S. states. In my personal experience as a native Michigander - home of the 10 cent deposit* - I can attest to bottle bills' efficacy in commodifying waste. Discarded beverage containers that would be litter elsewhere possessed economic value and were likely to be retrieved by enterprising individuals with free time, and redeemed for cash value.** Samantha McBride, author of Recycling Reconsidered:
"[Under bottle bills] the consumer [returns] the container to the point of purchase...it maintains its economic value. And research has shown very high rates of [recycling] -- much higher than in curbside recycling scenarios...[If] we could promote a national bottle bill and extend it to more plastics and glass container we could have a very different scenario of recycling that would be more economically advantageous and ecologically relevant."
Allen Hershkowitz further noted that of the 25-26 percent of plastic water and soda bottles currently recycled, 70 percent come from the 10 states with bottle bills.
(*Recall the classic Seinfeld episode where Kramer and Newman schemed to return 5 cent NY bottles for the 10 cent MI deposit.)
(**Something of a euphemism for the homeless and vagrants. There exist (probably apocryphal) legends in Ann Arbor of entrepreneurial homeless men able to afford upmarket bicycles through collection and return of ubiquitous college town beer bottles/cans.)
The crux of our inefficient, linear approach to production and recycling:
"[We] subsidize pollution. We subsidize the virgin extraction industries and we subsidize the energy industry. And that makes recycling less cost competitive. One of the major benefits of recycling is energy savings...[If] we're subsidizing electricity by subsidizing oil and coal we're making the economic benefit of recycling diminished...The same goes for virgin paper making. We give away wood below market rates on national forest land...and this makes recycling paper less cost competitive...[The] marketplace is thoroughly distorted against environmental progress."
--Allen Hershkowitz, February 21, 2012 broadcast of the Diane Rehm Show*
(*I'd like to highly recommend listening to the broadcast in its entirety; other topics discussed include recycling e-waste, disincentives for excessive product packaging and organizing to demand better recycling programs from food providers. As mentioned earlier: fascinating.)
The Hershkowitzian view conforms neatly with the ethic espoused by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins in the environmental economics work Natural Capitalism. By neglecting to assign economic value to "natural capital' (exploited natural resources), traditional capitalist accounting does not fully adhere to its own principles - extracted resources injected into commerce are considered "income" and not liquidated capital. Consistent with Hershkowitz's points on recycling and underutilization of already harvested/produced products, Hawken, Lovins and Lovins posited that radical increases in resource productivity through a cyclical conception of product life could lead to tremendous economic gain if employed.
Allen Hershkowitz of the Natural Resources Defense Council:
"[Japan and Europe] limit the amount of material that goes to landfill. They have landfill taxes...[and] a policy called producer responsibility which requires the consumer products companies to help pay for the infrastructure to collect the material and send it to a recycling facility. Right now, municipal waste is [entirely] financed by taxpayers or consumers...Producer responsibility rationalizes the price signals, and helps support municipal programs financially and directs more material to recycling."
"[The Japanese] prohibit the deposit into landfills of certain types of plastics and paper. Their bottles are standardized size so that they could be refilled. They combine deposit laws with producer responsibility laws with bans of certain material going to landfills."
Another innovative solution are "bottle bills", as currently exist in 10 U.S. states. In my personal experience as a native Michigander - home of the 10 cent deposit* - I can attest to bottle bills' efficacy in commodifying waste. Discarded beverage containers that would be litter elsewhere possessed economic value and were likely to be retrieved by enterprising individuals with free time, and redeemed for cash value.** Samantha McBride, author of Recycling Reconsidered:
"[Under bottle bills] the consumer [returns] the container to the point of purchase...it maintains its economic value. And research has shown very high rates of [recycling] -- much higher than in curbside recycling scenarios...[If] we could promote a national bottle bill and extend it to more plastics and glass container we could have a very different scenario of recycling that would be more economically advantageous and ecologically relevant."
Allen Hershkowitz further noted that of the 25-26 percent of plastic water and soda bottles currently recycled, 70 percent come from the 10 states with bottle bills.
(*Recall the classic Seinfeld episode where Kramer and Newman schemed to return 5 cent NY bottles for the 10 cent MI deposit.)
(**Something of a euphemism for the homeless and vagrants. There exist (probably apocryphal) legends in Ann Arbor of entrepreneurial homeless men able to afford upmarket bicycles through collection and return of ubiquitous college town beer bottles/cans.)
The crux of our inefficient, linear approach to production and recycling:
"[We] subsidize pollution. We subsidize the virgin extraction industries and we subsidize the energy industry. And that makes recycling less cost competitive. One of the major benefits of recycling is energy savings...[If] we're subsidizing electricity by subsidizing oil and coal we're making the economic benefit of recycling diminished...The same goes for virgin paper making. We give away wood below market rates on national forest land...and this makes recycling paper less cost competitive...[The] marketplace is thoroughly distorted against environmental progress."
--Allen Hershkowitz, February 21, 2012 broadcast of the Diane Rehm Show*
(*I'd like to highly recommend listening to the broadcast in its entirety; other topics discussed include recycling e-waste, disincentives for excessive product packaging and organizing to demand better recycling programs from food providers. As mentioned earlier: fascinating.)
The Hershkowitzian view conforms neatly with the ethic espoused by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins in the environmental economics work Natural Capitalism. By neglecting to assign economic value to "natural capital' (exploited natural resources), traditional capitalist accounting does not fully adhere to its own principles - extracted resources injected into commerce are considered "income" and not liquidated capital. Consistent with Hershkowitz's points on recycling and underutilization of already harvested/produced products, Hawken, Lovins and Lovins posited that radical increases in resource productivity through a cyclical conception of product life could lead to tremendous economic gain if employed.
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