Recycling Around the World… United States

Todays recipro posts continues our look at how other countries deal with waste and recycling.

We are looking at the UNITED STATES: with a BBC report from Matthew Davis

Efforts to improve recycling rates and to reduce household and commercial waste are led by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Today, the US recycles about 28% of its waste, the EPA says, a rate that has almost doubled during the past 15 years.

Recycling of specific materials has grown even more drastically: 42% of all paper, 40% of all plastic soft drink bottles, 55% of all aluminium beer and soft drink cans, 57% of all steel packaging, and 52% of all major appliances are now recycled.

Twenty years ago, only one roadside recycling programme existed in the US.

By 1998 there were 9,000 roadside programmes and 12,000 recyclable drop-off centres across the nation.

Some 480 materials recovery plants have been established to process the collected materials.

In 1999, recycling and composting activities prevented about 64 million tons of material from ending up in landfills and incinerators.

The EPA’s WasteWise scheme is aimed at businesses and other organisations and targets the reduction of municipal solid waste and certain industrial wastes.

Recycling rates vary from state to state. At the bottom end of the scale Alaska, Wyoming and Montana recycle less than 9% of waste, while in New York, Virginia and five other states more than 40% of waste is recycled.

Here in the recipro offices we’re really enjoying these insights into how other countries operate. We love to find out about different systems, contrasting attitudes and how the we can benchmark and improve our systems.