EPA's waste office plans to implement “more concrete actions” on sustainable materials management (SMM) in 2016, according to the office's top official, with the agency planning to place a priority on reuse and recycling in the “built” environment, food management and sustainable packaging.
SMM is “a systemic approach to using and reusing materials more productively over their entire lifecycles,” EPA says on its website. In addition to reducing waste and conserving resources, EPA ties SMM to reducing climate impacts as well.
The office began pursing SMM opportunities following a 2009 EPA report, “SMM: The Road Ahead,” which recommended steps the agency could take to promote integrated materials management. The initial steps were “challenges” in the electronics and food sectors as well as the “Federal Green Challenge” aimed at lowering federal agencies' environmental impacts.
While SMM has played a prominent role in 2015, "I do believe that we are putting more concrete actions [in place] over the next year," Mathy Stanislaus, assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Land & Emergency Management (OLEM), told Inside EPA in a Dec. 10 interview. EPA recently renamed the Office of Solid Waste & Emergency Response (OSWER), adopting the Office of Land & Emergency Management title to more closely reflect the office's work.
In September, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced a first-ever national food waste reduction goal of 50 percent by 2030. And the agency in 2015 also undertook efforts in the international arena to promote resource efficiency – an approach to reusing materials more productively.
Both efforts will see more actions in 2016, Stanislaus said.
On food recovery, the agency is collaborating with state and local governments and the food sector industry to issue an action plan to tackle wasted food in the United States by Earth Day, Stanislaus said. The commitment came at a first-ever Food Recovery Summit, co-sponsored by EPA in November 2015, where Stanislaus stressed the environmental, social and economic needs to act on food waste.
On the international front, EPA plans in 2016 to follow through on commitments the United States made in Group of 7 (G7) meetings in 2015. At those meetings, the United States and other economically powerful countries agreed to take “ambitious action to improve resource-efficiency,” and agreed to establish a network of best practices in working with businesses to advance a so-called circular economy, which involves recirculating materials. As part of that commitment, EPA plans to host a workshop in early spring to consider supply chain resource efficiencies, featuring work the auto industry and its suppliers have already advanced to maximize the recovery and reengineering of materials.
In the Dec. 10 interview, Stanislaus said the event will not be limited to the auto industry. “We expect that to be a major effort to look at the supply chain to drive sustainable management materials’ outcomes,” he said.
In addition, part of the G7 effort is to establish a network of best practices – what are the metrics and measurements, Stanislaus said.
Sustainability Growth
In advocating SMM, the agency points to the rise of global raw materials use in the last century, noting on its website that for every 1 percent rise in gross domestic product, raw material use increased by 0.4 percent. EPA links materials management to an estimated 42 percent of the United States’ greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and says increased consumption has had other environmental impacts, including habitat and biodiversity loss, desertification and stressed fisheries.
While EPA draws its basis for the SMM program from the Resource Conservation & Recovery Act (RCRA), which stresses resource conservation over disposal, EPA relies on voluntary actions -- working as a promoter, educator and facilitator -- for many SMM efforts it launches.
Tim Fields, a former EPA OSWER assistant administrator during President Clinton’s administration and now chair of the Sustainable Materials Management Coalition (SMMC), told Inside EPA that while SMM efforts are voluntary, nearly every major company in the United States in the past couple of years has designated a chief sustainability officer who focuses on decreasing GHG emissions and embracing SMM measures. They see it as good for their bottom line, as saving resources, and as something customers want, he said.
Although voluntary, “I’ve seen industry step up to the plate,” and embrace it, he said. The coalition that Fields chairs, SMMC, is a multi-stakeholder public-private partnership that gives advice to EPA and others on national policy direction on SMM.
Fields sees momentum building for SMM, noting that EPA has never had more input into SMM as it does now compared to his tenure when the agency's focus was more on Superfund site completions and RCRA corrective actions.
In a recently released strategy, the agency laid out its several-year focus for the SMM program, naming its three priority areas as the “built” environment, sustainable food management and sustainable packaging. These “present significant opportunities for environmental, economic, social and program performance results,” says EPA’s “Sustainable Materials Management Program Strategic Plan” for fiscal years 2017-2022, released this past fall.
While management of material and waste largely rests at state and local levels, EPA says it sees its role as providing “national consistency” and co-implementing waste law with states “by providing states, businesses and other stakeholders with national standards, guidelines, and technical support to more effectively conserve and manage materials and waste,” the plan says.
The plan builds on initiatives started in 2010 when EPA launched SMM. The plan says the agency will continue to seek to improve measurement systems to track and evaluate trends related to “prevention, reuse, recycling, disposal, processing capacity, feedstocks for markets, and public access to recycling or reuse options.”
Further, “EPA will maintain and improve the analytical tools and methods for quantifying the environmental and economic impacts of SMM efforts,” the plan says. It builds on the three SMM “Challenges” – electronic, food and federal green challenges – to bolster support for the three strategic priorities. And, the agency will strengthen its collaboration with stakeholders on the national and international levels, it says.
Continued Efforts
Fields told Inside EPA that the new strategic plan embodies efforts the agency began several years ago and ensures their continuation in the future.
For each of the three priorities, the strategic plan lays out objectives and anticipated outcomes by 2022.
Under the “built” environment, EPA calls for weaving lifecycle SMM concepts into the marketplace, for instance by increasing the safe reuse and recycling of construction and demolition (C&D) materials, and bolstering the safe beneficial use of certain types of industrial byproduct materials. It also calls for advancing climate adaptation measures by developing a national data tracking approach to measuring debris generated and improving disaster debris management plans to boost resilience to disasters, among other measures.
Further, to improve data and measurement of C&D materials, the plan says EPA will create a national baseline and trend data for generating, reusing, recycling, and disposing of C&D materials, and improve and expand its Waste Reduction Model (WARM) and other tools used to quantify environmental and economic benefits of managing C&D materials and industrial byproducts. EPA created WARM to aid solid waste planners in the tracking and voluntary reporting of GHG reductions and energy savings from waste management practices, EPA’s website says.
Sustainable food management is considered a major priority for EPA, Fields says, pointing to the joint food waste initiative by McCarthy and Vilsack. Under this priority, the plan calls for developing an infrastructure to provide support for alternatives to landfilling wasted food, and expects to accomplish this by increasing the number of composting and anaerobic digestion facilities that accept wasted food.
Second, EPA calls for promoting “opportunities across the entire food life cycle to reduce wasted food from landfills,” with anticipated outcomes of making progress toward the 50 percent wasted food goal by lowering the amount of wasted food from retailer to consumer and the amount disposed of in landfills.
One environmental law attorney with industry says this aspect of the effort – to lower food waste -- is interesting because past attention has been on converting discarded waste to energy, but that has been spinning wheels for five years because facilities such as anaerobic digestion facilities are expensive. EPA’s focus seems to be on reducing GHGs and lowering food waste, rather than seeking funding from Congress for farms to do anaerobic digestion, the source says.
EPA calls for improving and standardizing the measurement of wasted food, in part by aligning its measurements with other measurement protocols, quantifying the number of composting and anaerobic digestion facilities, and calculating food loss to identify methods to target source reduction and diversion activities within the food lifecycle.
Industry Response
A spokeswoman for the American Chemistry Council (ACC), which represents the chemical industry, responded in writing to questions on EPA’s SMM efforts. On food waste, she expressed support for voluntary efforts EPA is undertaking to lower such waste, and noted the role of plastic packaging that can keep food fresher for longer periods of time and therefore reduce the likelihood of it spoiling.
“In addition to reducing food waste, this approach also prevents the resources that went into growing, harvesting, storing, transporting and preparing that food from being wasted,” she said.
To address the third priority, sustainable packaging, EPA calls for collaborating with states and others on policies and practices regarding lifecycle-based approaches, such as through national dialogues to reduce packaging; working within EPA and other agencies to coordinate packaging-related policies, research and development and recycling processes for hard-to-recycle materials.
Also under sustainable packaging, EPA is advocating increasing the availability of information that supports the recycling of packaging, among other measures.
Stanislaus and the environmental law attorney also point to the definition of solid waste rule EPA issued in early 2015 as encouraging recycling. The rule strengthens Bush-era requirements for recycling hazardous waste, but allows “verified” recyclers to obtain a variance from strict hazardous waste requirements. Industry and environmental groups are currently suing the agency over the rule, with the former calling it too strict and the latter too lax.
Stanislaus says, “When you look at the definition of the solid waste rule, that also informed us. We did all this analysis about the opportunity for closed loop behavior in the private sector.”
And the environmental law attorney says with DSW, EPA promotes reuse and recycling where it is possible, but only where the end result is environmentally protective. Stanislaus is looking up and down the supply chain with an inclination toward reuse, the source says.
DSW Concerns
But the spokeswoman for ACC, which is one of the groups challenging the DSW rule, differs with them on the rule’s recycling impacts. She says recycling is “well-integrated” into chemical companies’ operations, often reusing valuable secondary materials and closed loop recycling, but adds, “That’s why we were so disappointed to see EPA’s final [DSW] rule, which adds a number of unnecessary requirements to longstanding exclusions that have historically encouraged recycling and reclamation.”
“EPA should ensure that its regulatory efforts do not hinder the benefits of sustainable materials management or our industry’s ongoing responsible management of these materials,” she said.
Asked whether SMM could in the future reduce regulatory requirements or enforcement, Stanislaus said, “I can’t say. I think you always have to begin with a floor of protection. Once you get beyond the floor, there are all these opportunities,” he said.
Beyond 2016, sources projected a likelihood that the SMM voluntary efforts would continue. Fields said he believed no matter the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, the efforts will continue because the business community has embraced the concept, and state and local governments have adopted goals for zero waste, waste diversion and related measures. “This is not a Republican or Democratic set of issues,” he said.
The environmental law attorney believes a Democratic or moderate Republican president would likely continue with SMM, but was unsure if it would continue should Donald Trump win the election. – Suzanne Yohannan (syohannan@iwpnews.com)
