Resource Recovery In 2012, the City provided recycling collection for over 190,000 households
Current Baseline and Need for Action
W It’s not waste. It’s a resource.
aste is a reality of life; unconsumed materials are generally discarded. Waste management involves processes to reduce, recover, divert, and dispose of materials that are no longer needed for their intended purposes. Traditionally, cities have disposed of waste in landfills that do not account for environmental, economic or social costs. Disposal results in lost resources when materials that retain economic value and use are discarded, increasing energy use and the need for raw materials. Landfill disposal will continue to play a role in waste management, but the current system must evolve from one that promotes disposal to one optimized for resource recovery and reuse.1 Increasing costs of energy and raw materials and strong market values for recyclable materials will continue to support the transition to resource recovery and reuse. Resource recovery activities include waste prevention, recycling, reuse, composting of organic waste, and extended producer responsibility (EPR), which holds manufacturers accountable for all stages of a product’s lifecycle including the end of life(recovery and/or safe disposal). Resource recovery generates economic value while reducing the amount and cost of disposal.
The City of Milwaukee is taking steps to optimize resource recovery and use waste as a resouce. The City provided residential recycling collection to 190,000 households in 2012 at a net cost of $4.4 million.2 The recycling program experienced its third consecutive year of increased recovery, with a 13 percent increase in pounds recycled per household between 2009 and 2012.3 Overall, the City’s landfill diversion rate, waste that was reused, recycled, or composted instead of landfilled, increased from 21.4 percent in 2010 to 24.3 percent in 2012.4 This success stems from recent changes with more frequent and guaranteed recycling collection dates; a change to Single-Sort recycling that no longer requires separation of recyclables into different containers; additional materials accepted for recycling; and strong educational efforts through the Recycle for Good outreach campaign.
Milwaukee is sending less to the landfill. Nearly 25% of waste is diverted. Instead it’s recycled, reused or compsted.
For continued success, Milwaukee must broaden its emphasis of resource recovery beyond residential recylcing to better address commercial and industrial waste. Industrial waste from one facility can be used as production input at another facility with minimal value-added processing. By-product synergy, as this reuse concept is known, saves manufacturers money on waste disposal, reduces landfill waste, creates intermediary value-added processing jobs, and cuts costs for the down-stream user. With one of the country’s most robust manufacturing sectors, Milwaukee has a unique opportunity to monetize industrial by-products, which can result in economic growth. One focus of resource recovery must include neighborhood cleanliness, which is a high priority for Milwaukee residents and ranked in the top public outreach survey responses as an important issue to address in the City’s Sustainability Plan. Neighborhood cleanliness is an indicator of environmental quality of life for many residents and, when lacking, adversely affects neighborhoods. As the City and its partners invest in new resource recovery strategies, improved access to recycling infrastructure, Sustainability Plan 2013 / 55