2020 RRS Article Recap

ICYMI: Recycling RRS-Authored Articles

It is the end of the year and we won’t say it…you know what 2020 was. We thought we would gather up the RRS-authored articles that hit industry publications this year and recycle them right here…in case you missed it.

Image as seen on Resource Recycling website

A Plan for Reinvigoration
by: Matt Naud (RRS), Matt Flechter (Michigan EGLE), and Elisa Seltzer (RRS)
First seen in Resource Recycling magazine, Feb 2020 issue.
Article Excerpt: Like many other states, Michigan saw stagnant growth in recycling and composting in the past decade. While the recycling rate is up from 15% in 2015 to 18.1% in 2018, representing an additional 546,000 tons per year diverted to recycling, Michigan still lags near the bottom of Midwest states in recycling rates. But with a variety of stakeholders working in a coordinated manner in the areas of data analysis, outreach, system funding, regional market development and more, Michigan is poised to once again become a national leader in materials recovery

Robust Communications
by: Marissa Segundo (RRS)
First seen in Recycling Today magazine, Apr 2020 issue.
Article Excerpt: In 1970, consumers were exposed to 500 media messages daily on average. Today, that number exceeds 5,000. Using custom data to develop personalized strategic communications and tailoring a powerful recycling message with a multimodal strategy can make positive behavior change a possibility for local recycling programs.

EPR Model Approach
by: Resa Dimino (RRS) and Bryce Hesterman (RRS)
First seen in Recycling Today magazine, May 2020 issue.
Article Excerpt: EPR is a practice and a policy approach in which producers take responsibility for managing products and/or packaging they produce at the end of their useful lives. Responsibility may be fiscal, physical or a combination of the two. EPR shifts the financial burden of recycling from the ratepayer or government to the producer and consumer of the products and packaging being recycled.

Image as seen on Resource Recycling website

Organic Improvements
by: Kate Maguire (RRS)
First seen in Resource Recycling magazine, July 2020 issue.
Article Excerpt: n 2018 and 2019, RRS was engaged by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) to perform a commercial and institutional sector food scrap recycling landscape assessment for the cities of Denver and Baltimore. In working through the landscape assessments, the RRS team, NRDC representatives and local city officials identified key areas of focus for developing successful food diversion programs for commercial and institutional entities.

©RRS 2020

Shattering Glass Barriers
by: Marissa Segundo (RRS)
First seen in Recycling Today magazine, Aug 2020 issue.
Article Excerpt: In late 2016, GRC formed to unite members throughout the glass recycling value chain to build regional opportunities to grow end-market demand for recycled glass. The collaborative focuses on educating communities, consumers, material recovery facilities (MRFs) and brands on glass recycling opportunities and challenging real and perceived barriers to glass recycling success.

Rethinking Rural Recycling
by: Elisa Seltzer (RRS)
First Seen in Recycling Today magazine, Sep 2020 issue.
Article Excerpt: Barriers faced by rural recycling programs are of no surprise to today’s recyclers. Challenged by low population density, higher cost-per-household collection, often distant markets and lower per capita tax revenue streams, these programs are not afforded the economies of scale central to the processing and marketing success of urban recycling programs. Fortunately, successful models demonstrate best practices that can be applied to achieve results in rural recovery programs.

Image as seen on Resource Recycling website

Real-World Test
by: Beth Coddington (RRS)
First seen in Rexource Recycling magazine, Sep 2020 issue.
Article Excerpt: It was March 2019, and after years of planning, research, and engineering, the first test bales destined to become a new commodity called rFlex were rolling off the line at TotalRecycle, a large single-stream materials recovery facility (MRF) in eastern Pennsylvania. These bales and the pilot program producing them represented a potential answer to a question that had long challenged recyclers, packagers and plastics producers: How could flexible plastic packaging, one of the fastest-growing materials in the post-consumer waste stream, fit into a recycling system that wasn’t designed for it?

Data Corner
Data Corner is a monthly feature in Resource Recycling magazine that draws attention to data and provides a perspective on different areas of the recycling world. Below are the RRS-authored Data Corners.

Large-Hauler MRF Market Share in North America (Mar 2020)
Tonnage Changes in Materials in US Municipal Recycling (Jun 2020)
Sources of rPET in Relation to Demand (Sep 2020)