Recycling Is About You and Me

May 5, 2020

May 5, 2020


Today's guest blog is authored by NERC board member Chaz Miller. The original post can be accessed here.


Fifty years ago, the first Earth Day focused America’s attention on our polluted air and water and our rat-filled open burning dumps.  Earth Day touched a nerve. At a time of increasing prosperity, Americans wondered why we didn’t live in a cleaner, healthier environment.


Earth Day lead to pioneering environmental legislation. The Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act were all signed into law within four years. They are fundamental to the cleaner environment we enjoy today.


As for those dumps, Congress turned its attention to trash with the enactment of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) in 1976.  In spite of its title, that law was primarily about municipal trash and hazardous waste. Open burning dumps would be a thing of the past.  Landfills and hazardous waste would be regulated. RCRA gave EPA some resource conservation duties, but recycling itself was barely mentioned in the new law.


All four laws shared one characteristic. They focused on large scale sources of pollution, not on individuals. Yet while Earth Day clearly created the political support for those laws, recycling was one of its biggest beneficiaries. We intuitively knew we could do little about dirty air and water, but we could do something about garbage and recycling. 


Garbage collection itself began almost a century before Earth Day as a way to clean up our cities from the filth and health dangers caused when garbage was thrown out of windows. Putting trash in a can was a relatively easy social norm to create.  People immediately saw its advantages. 


By the first Earth Day, we looked on garbage pickup as normal. But our interest in recycling was triggered. In the following years thousands of recycling centers, often volunteer organized and run, sprung into being. Most died as volunteers lost their enthusiasm or markets went down, yet the hardy survived. They were joined by this new thing called curbside recycling.  n 1968, two cities, San Francisco and Madison, Wisconsin, collected newspapers at the curbside. By 1980, more than 250 curbside programs existed. Most just collected newspaper, but a growing number were also collecting cans and bottles. 


Earth Day and its aftermath emphasized how garbage and recycling are unique among environmental issues. You and I make garbage. Then we have a choice. We can put all of it in our trash can or we can put our recyclables in our recycling bin and put the rest in the trash can. It’s up to us. This is both the strength and weakness of recycling. 


While garbage is easy, recycling is hard. It requires more than just putting everything in a can and taking it to the curb. Now we have to know which material to put in which bin. The products and materials we use today are far more complicated than they were in 1970.  We need to fully develop a social norm for recycling.  Unlike some countries, such as Switzerland or Germany or Japan, our culture just isn’t there yet.


Unfortunately, the human side of recycling is ignored when state and local recycling laws are being written. Too many lawmakers naively assume that because recycling is good and people want to do it, that we will immediately recycle correctly.  They set lofty goals that most people are just not interested in meeting. A little humility about the limits of their power would go a long way among America’s legislators. If they legislate it does not mean that we will do it.


We do have some ways of creating that recycling social norm. Deposit laws are highly effective at getting people to recycle beverage containers. When people pay a deposit on beverage containers they are likely to return them to get their money back.  Recycling those containers is then easy. The pandemic we are experiencing is proving the ability of deposits to supply reliable quantities of quality raw materials. Because most of the deposit states have lifted deposit return enforcement, PET and glass and aluminum end users that relied on those containers are scrambling to find raw materials.


Pay-as-you-throw programs also create the incentive to recycle. They charge a lower overall cost for solid waste services to people who create less waste and more recyclables.  They work. Again money is involved. 


Other attempts to increase recycling depend on better education and enforcement of existing laws, both of which are important. Education offers no monetary advantages, but enforcement fines can sting. 


We are now being told that producers created these products, so they, not consumers, should be responsible for fixing it. Yet every extended producer responsibility in the world still depends on individuals putting their recyclables in the right bin.  Unlike deposits and pay-as-you-throw, individuals have no economic incentive, even though they are unknowingly paying for recycling when they make their purchases.


We are also being told that mechanical systems are on the way that will automatically sort through our trash and pull out the recyclables. We’ve been hearing that, and waiting for those machines, since I started at EPA in 1976. They’re still not here.


Recycling remains one of America’s most popular environmental activities. It’s 50 years after the first Earth Day. We can do better, but that won’t happen just because it is the right thing to do. That will happen when we start crafting policies and programs that take human nature into account and don’t dismiss it out of hand."



Disclaimer: Guest blogs represent the opinion of the writers and may not reflect the policy or position of the Northeast Recycling Council, Inc.

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August 29, 2025
Northeast Recycling Council (NERC) Publishes 25 th Report Marking Six Years of Quarterly Data
By Recycled Materials Association July 29, 2025
The Northeast Recycling Council (NERC) has opened the 2025 Emerging Professionals (EP) Program . Now, in its third year, the program provides professionals who are new to the field of recycling, sustainability, and environmental stewardship with discounted access to NERC’s Conference and Foundations Course, sponsored by their employer organization. EPs gain valuable connections with seasoned industry professionals and peers while engaging in discussions on current trends, challenges, and innovations shaping the industry. This program is designed for those with three or fewer years of experience. “This year, EPs also receive a discount to our Foundations of Sustainable Materials Management course (a live, instructor-led training) developed to provide the key building blocks for understanding the industry,” said Mariane Medeiros, Senior Project Manager at NERC. “It’s a great way to close the loop: gaining both a strong technical foundation and real-world connections in one experience.” Read and Learn More.
By Chaz Miller June 30, 2025
Recycling coordinators know that some people and locations are stubbornly indifferent to recycling. COVID has ruptured civic values and behavior. Creating a recycling culture is harder than ever. Producers know how to sell their products. Now they need to learn how to sell recycling. On July 1, Oregon’s packaging and paper extended producer responsibility (EPR) program begins operating. This will be a first in our country. “Producers”, instead of local governments or private citizens, will be paying to recycle packages and paper products. Colorado’s program begins operating early in 2026. For years we have heard the theory of how packaging EPR will work. At last, we will get results. Five other states also have laws. Their programs should all be operating by 2030. None of the state laws have identical requirements. The Circular Action Alliance, the “producer responsibility organization” responsible for managing the program in most of those states, knows it has a lot on its plate. EPR laws are not new to the U.S. Thirty-two states already have laws that cover a wide variety of products such as electronics, paint, mattresses, batteries, etc. Those laws are relatively simple. Most cover one product. The producer group is a small number of companies. Goals and programs are focused and narrow. They are a mixed bag of success and failure. Packaging EPR is far more complex. The number of covered products is way higher. Thousands of companies are paying for these programs. Goals are challenging. Some are impossible to meet. In addition, local governments treat recycling as a normal service. Their residents will still call them if their recyclables aren’t picked up. It probably hasn’t helped that advocates tout EPR as the solution for recycling’s problems. We are told we will have more collection and better processing with higher recycling rates. Markets will improve and even stabilize. Some of this will happen, but not all. Collection and processing should go smoothly in Oregon. The state has high expectations for recycling. I have no doubt recycling will increase. Collection programs will blanket the state, giving more households the opportunity to recycle. I’m not sure, though, how much of an increase we will see. Recycling coordinators know that some people and locations are stubbornly indifferent to recycling. COVID has ruptured civic values and behavior. Creating a recycling culture is harder than ever. Producers know how to sell their products. Now they need to learn how to sell recycling. Another challenge is the “responsible end market” requirements. You’ve probably seen pictures of overseas dumps created by unscrupulous or just naïve plastics “recyclers”. In response, Oregon and the other states are requiring sellers and end markets to prove they are “responsible”. They must provide information about who and where they are, how they operate, how much was actually recycled, and more. Recycling end markets pushed back. Paper and metals recyclers argue they shouldn’t be covered. They don’t cause those problems. As for plastics, the general manager of one of America’s largest plastics recycling companies said his company now spends time and money gathering data and filling out forms to prove they’re “responsible”. His virgin resin competitors don’t have to. Ironically, we now import more plastics for recycling than we export. Maybe those countries should impose similar requirements on their plastics recyclers. Colorado faces unique problems. The mountain state is large. Its population is concentrated on the I-25 corridor running north and south through Denver with low population density elsewhere. Recycling collection and processing is limited as are end markets. To make matters worse, slightly more than half of its households use “subscription” services for waste and recycling collection. Those services are funded by the households, not by taxpayers. EPR doesn’t have this experience in other countries. Colorado gets to blaze this trail. The second state to go live poses substantive challenges for producers. The good news for both states? Local governments that pay for recycling collection and processing will see most of those costs go away. Consumers are unlikely to see prices rise, for now. National companies will simply spread their costs among all 50 states. Local and regional producers, unfortunately, don’t have that advantage. As for improved markets, remember that recyclables are and always will be commodities subject to the ups and downs of the economy. I don’t see substantive changes in recycling markets unless the producer group’s members try to manipulate markets to their own advantage. 2025 saw new laws and changes to existing laws. Maryland and Washington became the sixth and seventh packaging EPR states. At the same time, California is rewriting its regulations and Maine significantly revised its law. Some of these changes narrowed EPR’s scope to the dismay of advocates. I’m a member of Maryland’s EPR Advisory Council. We’ve been meeting for a year, discussing the Needs Assessment and now our new law. We have our own unique set of challenges. We also have a big advantage. We can learn from Oregon’s and Colorado’s experiences. Tune in next year to learn how we are progressing. Read on Waste360.