Recycling
“Waste was linked to 36.7% of total U.S. greenhouse gases in 2005″
Although the U.S. represents less than 5% of the world’s population, we generate 22% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, use 30% of the world’s resources, and create 30% of the world’s waste. If unchecked, annual greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. will increase to 9.7 gigatons* carbon-dioxide equivalents (CO2) by 2030, up from 6.2 gigatons CO2 in 1990. To effectively address global climate change, the U.S. must dramatically shift its relationship to natural resources.
Recycling Benefits
Recycling is widely accepted. Some two-thirds of Americans all ready practice some form of recycling. And recycling has a proven economic track record of spurring more economic growth than any other option for the management of waste and other recyclable materials.
Recycling offers the opportunity to cost-effectively decrease GHG emissions in many industries, while simultaneously diminishing methane emissions from landfills. Waste directly impacts climate change because it is directly linked to resource extraction, transportation, processing, and manufacturing. Our linear system of extraction, processing, transportation, consumption, and disposal is intimately tied to core contributors of global climate change such as industrial energy use, transportation, and deforestation. When we minimize waste, we reduce greenhouse gas emissions in these and other sectors by foregoing the extraction and use of new, virgin raw materials.
Since 1970, we have used up one-third of global natural resources. Virgin raw materials industries are among the world’s largest consumers of energy and are thus significant contributors to climate change because energy use is directly correlated with greenhouse gas emissions. The paper manufacturing industry (2002), for example, consumed over 2.4 quads (quadrillion or 1015 Btu) of energy and represented over 15% of U.S. manufacturing energy use.
Zero Waste Approach
Recycling embraces the zero waste approach to waste management. By significantly reducing the amount of waste landfilled and incinerated, the U.S can conservatively reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 406 megatons CO2 per year by 2030, which is the equivalent of taking 21% of the existing 417 coal-fired power plants off the energy grid. A zero waste approach has comparable (and sometimes complementary) benefits to leading proposals to protect the climate such as significantly improving vehicle fuel efficiency and hybridizing vehicles, expanding and enhancing carbon sinks (such as forests), or retrofitting lighting and improving electronic equipment. It also has greater potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions than environmentally harmful strategies proposed such as the expansion of nuclear energy. Indeed, a zero waste approach would achieve 7% of the cuts in U.S. emissions needed to put the U.S. on a path to climate stability by 2050.
Through the Urban Environmental Accords, 103 city mayors worldwide have committed to sending zero waste to landfills and incinerators by the year 2040 or earlier. More than two dozen U.S. communities and the state of California have also now embraced zero waste as a goal. These zero waste programs are based on (1) reducing consumption and discards, (2)reusing discards, (3) extended producer responsibility and other measures to ensure that products can safely be recycled into the economy and environment,* (4) comprehensive recycling, (5) comprehensive composting of clean segregated organics, and (6) effective policies, regulations, incentives, and financing structures to support these systems.
Methane gas in landfills
Landfills are the largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions in the U.S., and the impact of landfill emissions in the short term is grossly underestimated – methane is 72 times more potent than CO2 over a 20-year time frame. National data on landfill greenhouse gas emissions are based on international accounting protocols that use a 100-year time frame for calculating methane’s global warming potential. Because methane only stays in the atmosphere for around 12 years, its impacts are far greater in the short term. Over a 100-year time frame, methane is 25 times more potent than CO2. However, methane is 72 times more potent than CO2 over 20 years. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assesses greenhouse gas emissions over three time frames – 20, 100, and 500 years. The choice of which time frame to use is a policy based decision, not one based on science.24 On a 20-year time frame, landfill methane emissions alone represent 5.2% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, landfill gas capture systems are not an effective strategy for preventing methane emissions to the atmosphere. The portion of methane captured over a landfill’s lifetime may be as low as 20% of total methane emitted.
A need to act now
In our daily lives, there are many choices we can make to reduce, reuse, and to recycle. An often overlooked and little understood tool available to us in the home is composting. Composting avoids significant methane emissions from landfills, increases carbon storage in soils and improves plant growth, which in turn expands carbon sequestration. Composting is thus vital to restoring the climate and our soils. In addition, compost is a value-added product, while landfills and incinerators present long-term environmental liabilities.
Resource conservation, reduced consumption, product redesign, careful materials selection, new rules and incentives, democratic participation, and materials reuse, recycling, and composting have never been such a necessity as they are today. Indeed, aiming for a zero waste economy by preventing waste and recovering materials is essential for mitigating climate change. The time to act is now. We have to redesign our production, consumption, and resource management systems so that they can be sustained for generations to come.