Environmentalists. Every Day. America's Solid Waste Industry

On November 20, WASTEC member Green Power, Inc., was honored by top environmentalists at an awards ceremony at a Chicago event. Learn more about the Environmental Hall of Fame here. Learn more about Green Power here.

President Bush highlighted the importance of recycling with a proclamation recognizing America Recycles Day. The full text of the proclamation is available here.

An article in the December 2008 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine examines recycling, asking “Is Recycling Worth It?”. You can read the article here. The article discusses how technological advances pioneered by America’s solid waste industry have made recycling much more efficient and cost effective than it was decades ago. The web version of the article features a diagram showing how a single-stream sorting facility works. The online magazine also includes a list of 5 debunked myths of recycling. These are well-written articles; however, they author bases some of his assumptions on facts that no longer may be true, such as “the cost of raw materials has skyrocketed” and “few fear the precipitous plunge that rocked the recycling market in 1995.” In fact, as the global economy has weakened, commodity prices (including those of recycled materials) have fallen precipitously. American recyclers are motivated to continue increasing recycling, but the current economic situation poses serious challenges.

Election Day is over. It’s time to discard and recycle the campaign signs. All over the United States, thousands of solid waste and recycling collection trucks and workers are picking up your trash and recyclables. Red state, blue state, undecided state. It doesn’t matter. The hard working men and women in the solid waste and recycling workers do their job in a professional and environmental correct way, every day, no matter who you (or they) voted for. And tomorrow, and the next day, they will do it all over again.

Officials from the Waste Management landfill and the LaFarge cement plant have signed an agreement to use piped-in methane gas from the landfill to aid in the cement-making process.

The plan could save both companies thousands of dollars and eliminate the equivalent of 450,000 tons of coal a year from LaFarge’s manufacturing process, company officials said.

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New York City’s Business Integrity Commission (BIC) will vote on Friday, November 7 on a proposed 30 percent increase to the maximum rates that solid waste companies are allowed to charge commercial customers in the City. The City’s rate cap has not been changed since 1997. The BIC held a public hearing in October on its proposal; NSWMA and 10 member companies testified that the proposed increase is insufficient, as labor, disposal, fuel and other costs have gone up by much more than 30 percent since 1997. No one testified in opposition to the proposed increase. NSWMA has been lobbying City officials for rate cap reform for several years, and views the proposed 30 percent adjustment as an important step towards eventual rate deregulation.