October 6, 2008
Recycling advocate discusses efforts
Katy Daily says state's bottle bill was key impetus
Last week, Marion County residents learned that they top the state for the second year in a row for their recycling and composting efforts.
Those efforts are being scrutinized now as county officials work to update the solid waste plan and figure out how to handle the increasing waste during the next decade.
Katy Daily, a board member of the nonprofit Recycling Advocates, weighs in on the modern-day Three Rs — reduce, reuse and recycle.
Question: Oregonians have a reputation for being good recyclers nationwide. What have we done to deserve that?
Answer: Obviously, the bottle bill has been recognized by most people as being the impetus to set up an ethic of recycling in this state. That was one of the major things that people think about when they think about Oregon and recycling. But then the legislation did not stop there.
There were a couple of bellwether laws like mandating curbside recycling and realizing recovery goals and then creating programs all over the state on a county-by-county basis to try to encourage recycling.
A lot of what has been done to reach our recovery goals has been voluntary, educational efforts.
Q: What could we be doing better?
A: If you look at the hierarchy of waste reduction — reduce, reuse, recycle — recycle is the third option. We really need to focus more on the first two.
The first thing is reducing our consumption. It doesn't necessarily mean we have to lower our standard of living, it means we need to be smarter and better consumers and demand more from manufacturers as far as packaging is concerned, as far as understanding the recyclability of the packaging that we are getting and trying to get less packaging. It has so many implications: global warming, fuel use, resource use. That's the first step.
And then obviously reuse, so if you do have to use something, use it more than once. For example, buying packaging so you can use it more than once rather than buying it and then only recycling it.
Q: Is it a consumer's responsibility to reduce his own waste?
A: The onus isn't always on the consumer. They have to have those options, and they have to have labeling. They have to know in order to make the good choices.
The concept of product stewardship, which is a bill that the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and a bunch of groups are trying to introduce in the next legislative session, puts the onus on the manufacturers to create a system that talks about (a product's) end of life and taking something back. Hopefully, that designs in more recyclability, less packaging, safer packaging and safer products in the first place.
Q: Would that bill cover all products?
A: It would phase-in products on a product-by-product basis based on a set of criteria.
There's probably about 12 to 15 proposed initial criteria, a lot around the toxicity. …
For example, compact fluorescent lightbulbs with mercury. It is the perfect example of a product that you don't want to dissuade consumers from buying, but we need to be able to handle the mercury. And it should be the manufacturers that deal with it.
If they don't do it, then taxpayers have to. That's been the tradition that the cities, the counties and the state — and therefore the taxpayers — have been taking the load.
Q: Do you suggest that local jurisdictions have mandatory requirements in their plans?
A: I am an advocate of that. There is only so much you can do to change behavior through education. I don't think we would be where we are if we didn't have the bottle bill, we wouldn't be where we are if we didn't have mandatory curbside recycling.
Setting goals has been good, but without consequences when we are not meeting goals, I don't think we are going to make the leaps and bounds to really be more sustainable. And right now, we are moving at an unsustainable rate.
The good news in the last solid waste survey was that our total consumption went down per capita, and that is great. ... But it needs to go down at a much higher rate if we are going to be sustainable as our population grows.
Q: What is the biggest challenge local jurisdictions face in dealing with solid waste?
A: Part of the problem is that they are in a paradigm of dealing with solid waste and garbage. So part of it is their own structure is focused on the back-end — on garbage and recycling — and not doing enough to focus on lowering our consumption, lowering our packaging and thinking about things on the front end.
Part of that also is the reticence of Oregon to take on the manufacturers ourselves because Oregon is not a big enough market.
So for things like the product stewardship bill, there is a bill in Washington and California at the same time. As soon as we start doing regional things like that, I think we can make some real changes on the front end on how things are manufactured. And then it isn't up to the county to try to influence that — it can be done at a bigger level.
Q: Can you give an example of a manufacturer changing the packaging to prevent waste?
A: Instead of Hewlett Packard shipping their laptops to Wal-Mart in a box and one box for every laptop, they created messenger bags. Every laptop goes in its own custom messenger bag and now a box can hold 12 laptops.
bcasper@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 589-6994
