The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard [137]
Based on analysis of more than forty years of data on waste disposal, the nonprofit Product Policy Institute concluded that municipalities have only truly been successful at effectively minimizing one kind of waste: yard trimmings! That said, municipal recovery of food scraps (aka composting) was only started a few years ago—and it looks like it will be equally successful.53 However, what municipalities have been overwhelmed by is the rising tide of products, including recyclables. (I’ll go into more depth about the complexities of recycling later in this chapter.)
The recommendation of the Product Policy Institute—with which I strongly agree—is that municipal waste departments handle the kinds of waste they were originally created to handle: biowastes and biodegradable materials. Everything else should fall under extended producer responsibility, or EPR, which means that the company that makes the product or packaging must deal with it (with required preference for recycling or reusing it) at the end of its lifecycle. As PPI states, “The rationale for placing responsibility on producers is that they make design and marketing decisions and therefore have the greatest ability to reduce the environmental impact of their products.”54 Also, let’s not forget—it’s their business: they profit from making and selling all those products. EPR only makes sense, right?
In the absence of extended producer responsibility systems, municipal waste departments—paid for by us, let me remind you once again—are left trying to figure out how to collect, transport, and safely dispose of every product that comes through the system. I constantly meet recycling champions who are dedicated and earnest and who agonize over how to increase recycling rates. But I have to ask: why all this effort to keep cleaning up after corporations that aren’t cleaning up after themselves?
It reminds me of an insight I had about being a mom. One day I was walking around my house in frustration, picking up my kid’s shoes and schoolbooks and musical instruments and art projects that were scattered all over the house. Why did I always have to pick up after her? In a thundering clap of clarity, I realized why: because I am always picking up after her! Holding her accountable may be more work up front but is better for both of us. Similarly, citizens don’t have to be running around picking up after and reinforcing the bad behavior of companies who persist in making poorly designed, excessively packaged toxic junk that breaks too easily and is hard to recycle. If the companies which design and produce this Stuff were held responsible, they’d be making better, longer-lasting, and less-toxic Stuff in the first place. In this scenario, municipalities would be left dealing only with wastes that are compostable and biodegradable. Of course, we still need effective recycling and reuse infrastructure for existing and even future discards; with EPR, the product manufacturers will pay both for this recycling system and for the shift toward more easily recyclable product designs. In this way, EPR is not an alternative to recycling, but an essential complement. With these pieces in places, we’ll have taken a major step toward both corporate accountability and zero waste.
Construction and Demolition Waste (or C&D)
This waste stream is considered a subset of MSW but takes up so much landfill space that it often gets addressed as a separate category. C&D waste includes concrete, wood, gypsum drywall, metal, bricks, glass, plastic, and building components