The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently released
a National Recycling Strategy and Framework for Advancing the
U.S. Recycling System. According to EPA, the draft
National Recycling Strategy identifies strategic
objectives and actions needed to create a stronger, more
resilient, and cost-effective U.S. municipal solid waste
recycling system. Recycling has been a critical component of the
EPA’s decades-long efforts to implement the Resource
Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and its more recent efforts
to pursue a Sustainable Materials Management (SMM) approach,
which aims to reduce the environmental impacts of materials
across their lifecycle.
The U.S. recycling system currently faces a number of challenges,
including: confusion about what materials can be recycled,
recycling infrastructure that has not kept pace with today’s
diverse and changing waste stream, reduced markets for recycled
materials, and varying methodologies to measure recycling system
performance. The draft strategy identifies actions to address
these challenges that build on the collaborative efforts by
stakeholders from across the recycling system that began under
the National Framework, which are organized under
three strategic objectives: (1) reduce contamination in the
recycling stream; (2) increase processing efficiency; and, (3)
improve markets.
CSAC and our other local partners will be reviewing the strategy
over the next month and encourages comments to the federal
docket. EPA is currently accepting comments on
the draft
National Recycling Strategy through December 4,
2020 in the federal docket. To leave a comment, go
to regulations.gov and search
for the docket EPA-HQ-OLEM-2020-0462. CSAC will also be
collecting comments during November. Please email suggested
comments to cfreeman@counties.org by
November 20, 2020.
