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By Kay Martin

The year 2000 is what we've all been waiting for. That's when state recycling laws pray that good things will happen. Infrastructure will be in place, markets will expand, goals will be achieved. And let's be honest, we're an industry clearly in need of a major milestone. A pause to refresh. A pat on the back for yeoman efforts and real accomplishments. An official celebration of recycling's coming of age. But some revellers are nervous before the festivities even begin. Many states will do the necessary math to claim victory for their initial recycling goals. It's just that hitting the year 2000 target is no longer the crowning achievement it once was. The environmental natives are restless. The new millennium is but a rite of passage to the new frontier, and the landscape is daunting. There is already talk about upping the recycling ante. How high can we go? How about all the way? Why not ramp up to zero waste by 2020?

That's what makes a practitioner's heart race. There's a political dance that many fear has gotten a good two-step ahead of the current service industry's ability to follow, let alone lead-and with good reason. It's an industry narrowly focused on the recovery of segregated materials. An industry that has stumbled under the burden of uncertain materials markets. An industry seemingly preoccupied with protecting its own turf and investments. An industry short on new ideas. An industry that has done some pretty impressive huffing and puffing but has failed to blow the house down. Aside from a few fortunate niche markets, today's recycling infrastructure is economically marginal and, as such, is probably incapable of making the significant new inroads envisioned by framers of the post-2000 environmental agenda.

Most agree on the basic root problem. We've developed materials recovery as an expansion of existing waste-handling services but failed to create a truly integrated recycling system-one driven by the demand-pull of the marketplace and that perpetuates a positive environmental and economic balance sheet. But the problem is complex, and the solution elusive.

One popular school of thought is that the current supply-side approach to recycling can be salvaged by simply improving waste-handling efficiencies, abiding subsidies, and instituting minimum-content and take-back laws. We can drag manufacturers kicking and screaming over to the demand side of the equation by some clever combination of public legion and public largesse. Unfortunately, this approach has some critical weaknesses. First, it attempts to subvert market forces by creating a false recycling economy that, if it works at all, must be continuously buttressed and policed. Second, it seeks to influence industrial resource use without regard to the factors affecting productive efficiencies and technological innovation. Third, it is based upon poorly documented and potentially inaccurate assumptions about the life-cycle characteristics of a broad spectrum of virgin and secondary materials. Finally, it embodies a curious underlying reliance on demonology-the premise that corporate America is somehow inherently subversive and evil, and that capital gain necessarily occurs at the expense of the environment.

Another school of thought, and one to which I subscribe, is that we've done a credible job with the current recycling infrastructure in recovering marketable materials. That's not to say that greater efficiencies can't be realized in materials handling or that manufacturers can't make wiser feedstock and design decisions. We can and should actively pursue these gains through organizational and operational enhancements on the recovery end and through tax incentives and the wisdom of industrial ecology on the manufacturing end. But it could be that we've gone about as far as we can go with existing recovery and processing technologies. We might've already optimized commodities markets, fluctuate as they will, for many secondary materials. It's the more marginal fractions that are bogging us down. In order to make the next quantum leap in recycling, we will have to look to entirely new technologies that add value to these materials and provide access to a much broader range of established industrial markets.

But this requires a new mindset. We must ask ourselves some big questions: How do we bring existing scientific knowledge on the interplay of environment, resources, technology, and markets to bear on the design of future recycling systems? How do we most effectively integrate the policy domains and objectives of pollution prevention, sustainability, productive efficiency, and the creation of wealth? These are admittedly heady questions. The good news is that we're not the only ones asking them. There's a rich dialogue going on all around us. We just need to plug in.

New technologies now in the spotlight ought to make us stand up and take notice. Prominent among these are chemical or thermochemical processes that break down organic or cellulosic materials and convert resultant compounds into a wide variety of biochemicals and biofuels. Since these products are tremendously diverse and can compete directly with petroleum-based derivatives, their current and future market potential is staggering.

The conversion of organic feedstocks to biochemicals is receiving serious attention where it counts. In December of last year, the American Chemical Society and Green Chemical Institute held a workshop in conjunction with the US Department of Energy and National Renewable Energy Lab to explore the potential of bio-based feedstocks for chemical production. Since biochemicals are both renewable and environmentally benign, their development and potential for replacement of petrochemicals have enormous implications for both resource availability and pollution prevention. Because of its ongoing supply and existing infrastructure, the MSW stream is an economical source of materials that can feed this new industrial revolution.

A similar high-level dialogue is underway in the area of organic feedstocks for biofuels. A conference last spring brought together officials from the state's energy, air quality, forestry, and agricultural agencies with representatives from the Departments of Energy and Agriculture, US Forest Service, the White House, the Governor's Ethanol Coalition, automobile manufacturers, and a variety of biofuels producers to address the conversion of cellulosic materials to ethanol. If the biochemical and biofuels industries have already forged coalitions with public and private stakeholders to promote the development of new energy-efficient and environmentally beneficial technologies and products, and if the MSW materials we manage can be primary feedstocks for these new industries, why are solid waste folks not at the table? If we are to make a concerted run at putting most of the wastestream to productive use, it's time to expand our vision beyond MRFs and composting facilities to embrace new, environmentally sound technologies with substantial economic promise.

There are at least two immediate steps government can take. First, it is critical that state statutes both recognize and promote these technologies as recycling; for example, the hydrolytic conversion of organics-breaking down the materials into their component chemicals, and then variously recombining these chemicals into hundreds of new, nonpolluting compounds and products. Second, state and federal agencies responsible for solid waste management must actively partner with their sister regulatory agencies to create a comprehensive approach to resource conservation and pollution prevention that integrates the policy objectives of waste with those of air, water, energy, and resources. These state agencies must also move beyond their current regulatory stance with the private sector to a more collaborative strategy, which facilitates the development of industry incentives for technological innovation and productive efficiency.

The new millennium holds considerable promise to revitalize and expand recycling efforts. To seize this opportunity, we must be brutally honest about our present course, incorporate external costs of goods and services into the marketplace, and enthusiastically pursue strategic partnerships and innovative ideas.

MSW

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