Waste Prevention

The environmental benefits of recycling are well known. Many businesses, governments, and households are collecting discards for recycling, and are recovering more materials than ever before. In fact, over one-fifth of the municipal solid waste generated in our country is currently recycled or composted.

Despite progress in recycling, however, Americans are still generating too much waste. Every day, on average, each individual discards about four pounds of material. These discards burden both the environment and our economy.

Even recycling, which adds major economic and environmental benefits, creates economic and environmental costs. The best approach to our solid waste challenge is to cut the creation of waste in the first place.

Waste that is not created does not have to be managed later. That's why waste prevention (reducing and reusing) is the ideal solid waste solution.

Waste prevention involves altering the design, manufacture, purchase, or use of products and materials to reduce the amount and toxicity of what gets thrown away. Waste prevention is sometimes called source reduction because it reduces or eliminates pollution at the source. Thus, donating an unwanted computer to a charity (rather than setting it out for disposal or recycling its parts) is waste prevention. So is photocopying on both sides of a sheet of paper. Altering material specifications so that fewer hazardous constituents are used in a manufacturing process also is waste prevention. Waste prevention activities help shift the nation's emphasis from pollution cleanup to pollution avoidance.

Waste prevention and recycling-jointly referred to as waste reduction-help us better manage the solid waste we generate. But preventing waste and recycling also are potent strategies for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Together, waste prevention and recycling:

• Reduce emissions from energy consumption. Recycling saves energy. Manufacturing goods from recycled materials typically requires less energy than producing goods from virgin materials. Waste prevention is even more effective at saving energy. When people reuse things or when products are made with less material, less energy is needed to extract, transport, and process raw materials and to manufacture products. The payoff? When energy demand decreases, fewer fossil fuels are burned and less carbon dioxide is emitted to the atmosphere.
• Reduce emissions from incinerators. Recycling and waste prevention allow some materials to be diverted from incinerators and thus reduce GHG emissions from the combustion of waste.
• Reduce methane emissions from landfills. Waste prevention and recycling (including composting) divert organic wastes from landfills, thereby reducing the methane released when these materials decompose.
• Increase storage of carbon in trees. Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in wood, in a process called "carbon sequestration." Waste prevention and recycling of paper products allow more trees to remain standing in the forest, where they can continue to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency