June 30, 2008

NMRC Board Meeting - July 11

The next meeting of the NMRC board members is scheduled for July 11 at 11:00 AM in Bernalillo. All NMRC members are invited. To RSVP please email english@recyclenewmexico.com.

2008 NM Recycling Conference a Huge Success! Recycling Award Winners Announced

The June 3-4 2008 New Mexico Recycling Conference brought together more than 315 recycling professionals hailing from business, government and non-profit sectors. Over 50 speakers presented recycling-related materials at both breakout and plenary sessions.  Copies of speakers’ presentations can be found at http://www.nmrecycle.org/Conference08_Program.htm  

The conference kicked off with Jerry Powell’s keynote speech, “Recycling Now Soon and In the Future.” His presentation debunked the three myths of recycling with quantifiable information and material.  His discussion outlined why recycling is a significant waste management strategy; how recycling can work in any community and proof that recycling saves much more energy than it uses. 

A total of four concurrent breakout sessions took place on Tuesday and Wednesday. Topics ranged from Innovations in Organics Handling to Pay-As-You-Throw programs.   

Session Highlights

Gary Liss of Sierra Club National Zero Waste Committee discussed, “Sierra Club’s Zero Waste Policy, to Cool the Planet.”  Gary defined Zero Waste as a goal that is both pragmatic and visionary, to guide people to emulate sustainable natural cycles, where all discarded materials are resources for others to use.  Zero Waste means designing and managing products and processes to reduce the volume and toxicity of waste and materials, conserve and recover all resources and not burn or buy them.   Implementing Zero Waste eliminates all discharges to land, water or air that may be a threat to planetary, human, animal or plant health.  Gary went on to explain that Zero Waste is possible and highlighted communities that have successfully implemented the program.  He also sited nature as being the ultimate model for Zero Waste.  His presentation can be found at http://www.nmrecycle.org/Conference08_Program.htm. 

In Kim Jordan’s, “Getting Curbside Participation Using RecycleBank’s Incentive-Based Design,” Kim explained how the RecycleBank program rewards individuals for recycling.  Recycling carts in participating communities include a computer chip that identifies the cart as belonging to the proper residence.  Each week the collection truck weights the amount of material recycled and records the information through the computer chip.  The process is a quick and automated system.  Recyclers are then sent valuable coupons based on the pounds of material they recycle.  The coupons are from national and local retailers for items.  More information about Recyclebank can be found at www.recyclebank.com and Kim’s presentation is on the http://www.nmrecycle.org/Conference08_Program.htm website.

Tuesday afternoon featured the New Mexico Recycling Awards, in which 15 individuals, businesses and organizations were recognized for their dedication to recycling within New Mexico. The New Mexico Environment Department: Solid Waste Bureau also presented awards to the top 5 recycling counties for 2006 and 2007. The ceremony featured exhibitor hours, food and drinks and recycled-art artists.  NMRC staff and board members donned recycled fashion outfits to help celebrate the event.

2008 Recycling Award Winners: 

Winner Highlights:

Category: Recycling Processor of the Year - Master Fibers

Master Fibers recycles 70 tons a day!  That’s a lot of cardboard, paper, plastic, carpet pad and metal. They have been doing this in New Mexico for almost 25 years and are the only recycler that will service small business without charging. 

Hector Valverde with Master Fibers was one of the 28 exhibitors at the NM Recycling Conference 2008.

Category: Recycler of the Year Award Winner: Barry J. Conant and Keep Rio Rancho Beautiful

         The Recycler of the Year 2008 award was presented to Barry Conant and Keep Rio Rancho Beautiful. From left, NMRC Board President, O. Paul Gallegos, Barry Conant, English Bird (NMRC Executive Director) and Sarah Pierpont (Deputy Director).      

Barry Conant has excelled as the Keep Rio Rancho Beautiful Program Specialist for the past 4.5 years.  During this time, Barry has transformed the America Recycles Day Program in Rio Rancho from a once a year activity to a biannual community collection, including hard to recycle items such as eyeglasses, hearing aids, tires, appliances and electronics.  The electronics recycling effort Barry initiated increased the tonnage of recycled electronics from 11 to 17 tons in the course of one year.  Similarly, Barry has initiated recycling programs for materials collected during illegal dumpsite cleanups.  Barry is always seeking new opportunities to collaborate with partners, non-profit organizations, and community members to improve recycling programs and education in Rio Rancho.  Barry’s initiatives have rippled out into communities beyond Rio Rancho, and he is currently assisting a recycling effort in Tierra Bonita, Los Lunas, and Bosque Farms.  Barry Conant and the entire Keep Rio Rancho Beautiful Program exemplify the impact of a grassroots recycling approach, one in which individuals, the community and many towns in New Mexico benefit.                                                                                                

The Wednesday luncheon markets panel discussion was noted as one attendee's, “favorite part, with the guest speakers providing some great statistics and interesting facts.”  Conni Kunzler discussed glass markets, Doug McLeod highlighted paper markets, Steve Thompson discussed aluminum markets, Patty Moore elaborated on plastics markets and Dave Keeling addressed steel markets.

An incredible line-up for the Market Panel keynote session with a host of national speakers, from left: Dave Keeling, Steel Recycling Institute; E. Gifford Stack, NMED: Solid Waste Bureau; Patty Moore, Moore Recycling Associates; Conni Kunzler, Glass Packaging Institute; Doug McLeod, Catalyst Paper and Steve Thompson, Curbside Value Partnership. 

The conference wrapped up with two special sessions and tours to Jaco Environmental (refrigerator recycling), RASTRA (Styrofoam recycled content building material), Wise Recycling and Enchantment’s Electronics (E-scrap recovery).  The special workshops, entitled "Setting Up Recycling Within the Hospitality Industry" and "Construction and Demolition Recycling" had approximately 50 participants each. 

Many Thanks to our Conference Sponsors

New Mexico Environment Department: Solid Waste Bureau; Dex; PNM Resources: Intel; SBM Site Services; Livingry Fund of Tides Foundation; Waste Management Recycle America; Associated General Contractors: NM Building Branch; Gordon Environmental; NM Department of Transportation; Plastics Division - American Chemistry Council; Solid Waste Association of North America - NM RoadRunner Chapter; Waste Connections/Camino Real Recycling Center; Can Manufacturers Institute; Durango McKinley Paper Company; Steel Recycling Institute; UNICOR/Federal Prison Industries; Zia Engineering and Environmental Consultants; Whole Foods and Earthstone.

Recycling Certification Courses - Register Now!

For those entering their new fiscal year, take advantage of getting an early registration in for the Recycling and Compost certification courses before the classes start to fill up. Greg Baker is back in the hot seat for the Composting Course and the Recycling Course will include a field visit to the Santa Fe MRF.

Recycling Facility Operator Certification Course

December 9-11, Santa Fe

Composting Facility Operator Certification Course

October 7-9, Albuquerque

To register, please go to www.recyclenewmexico.com/cert_classes.htm

National Recycling Congress, September 21-24 in Pittsburgh

The City of Pittsburgh is a perfect symbol for this year's Congress Theme:  Innovation.  The city, once pictured as little more than black smoke stacks has transformed itself, through innovation and leadership, to "America's Most Livable City" with a verdant waterfront and a thriving civic culture.

For more information or to register go to:

http://events.jspargo.com/nrc08/public/enter.aspx

New Mexico Clean and Beautiful Announce Grant Award Recipients

For the upcoming fiscal year 2009, NMC&B has announced communities around the state who will receive grant awards (listed below). The local entities will use the funds - awarded based on an application process - to help in litter control, elimination and awareness; beautification; recycling; weed and graffiti eradication; overall education; and youth employment to assist in completing projects.
 

More information about NMC&B at http://www.nmcleanandbeautiful.org/

Call for Recycled Material Artists

The Recycle Santa Fe Art Festival is celebrating its tenth year on November 14-16 at El Museo Cultural in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Working with Keep Santa Fe Beautiful and their recycling education efforts surrounding America Recycles Day (November 15th), this event attracts thousands of art lovers, trashy shoppers and the eco-conscious holiday gift-giver. 

2008 artist applications are now available at www.recyclesantafe.org for Art Market vendors, Juried Art Show exhibitors, Trash Fashion & Costume Contest designers and Youth Juried Art Show exhibitors.  For more information contact Sarah Pierpont at 505-603-0558 or skpierpont@yahoo.com. 
 

US Conference of Mayors Votes to Ban Bottled Water

WaterWebster.org staff report

6/23/08

Mayors representing about 250 U.S. cities voted Monday to ban bottled water from city meetings and offices, except in cases of emergency.

On a voice vote, members of the U.S. Conference of Mayors supported a resolution proposed by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom that urges all mayors to phase out, “where feasible,” bottled water and support municipal water, said conference spokesperson Elena Temple.

Newsom earlier estimated San Francisco saved $1 million by using tap water instead of bottled. Co-sponsors of the resolution represented cities large and small, from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chicago’s Richard Daley, to Mayors Joseph A. Curtatone of Somerville, Ma., and Dan Coody of Fayetteville, Ar. Both Somerville and Fayetteville have populations under 80,000.

Coody, co-chair of the Conference’s Water Council, said in a telephone interview before the conference started that his city discontinued the use of bottled water several years ago.

He said he didn’t know how much Fayetteville had been spending on bottled water, but the main issues included paying for water that in many cases “is exactly the same quality as what’s right next to you in the kitchen.”

Environmental factors are another concern for many mayors, he said. The increased popularity of bottled water means more trash for landfills and more energy used for production and shipping.

Coody’s co-chair on the Water Council, Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez, said a U.S. Conference of Mayors’ study determined “bottled water costs more than 1,000 times what public water costs.” According to statistics provided to the Water Council, 25%-40% of all bottled water in the U.S. comes from the tap, some filtered and some not.

“That really graphically reinforced why cities aren’t buying bottled water,” he said, “you wouldn’t buy a pencil that cost 1,000 times more than another pencil.”

The resolution adopted by the mayors said local governments invest approximately $82 billion a year to provide water and sewer services.

The nonpartisan U.S. Conference of Mayors was established to represent the 1,139 U.S. cities with a population over 30,000. About 250 attend the convention, according to a staff person.

At its national conference last year, the mayors voted to study the implications of banning bottled water and asked for recommendations to be ready for this year’s meeting.

Laura Spanjian, external affairs assistant general manager of the San Francisco Water Utility, whose presentation to the Water Council was a significant part of the mayors’ study, said prior to the conference that less than 30% of water bottles are recycled.

In her May presentation to the Water Council, she noted that in 2006, total bottled water consumption in the U.S. hit 27.6 gallons per capita up from 25.4 gallons in 2005, meaning U.S. residents now drink more bottled water annually than any other beverage, other than carbonated soft drinks.

Seventy-four percent of Americans drink bottled water, and one in five drinks only bottled water, according to a 2002 survey sponsored by the EPA and conducted by the Gallup Organization.

Even though soft drinks and other container beverages take up far more landfill space, bottled water, said several mayors, is just an unnecessary addition to the problem. The bottles themselves only can be recycled once, compared to multiple times for glass and aluminum, according to the mayors’ studies, and few states include water bottles in recycling deposits, making it more difficult to reduce the volume reaching landfills. The plastic, although compressed as trash, takes generations to decompose.

“We’re not asking the industry to stop all sales,” said Spanjian, and the resolution urges cities to retain bottled water for emergencies.

Social Marketing - Convincing People and Developing Strategies to Increase Recycling

The national consulting group Aceti Associates offers publications online to help program managers understand what motivates people to engage in an activity and what discourages them from doing.

http://www.acetiassociates.com/publications.html

Find great resources on the following subjects:

Curbside and Drop-off Recycling: Describes the primary barriers and motivations for participation in curbside and drop-off recycling programs.

Recycling in Multifamily Buildings: Describes the barriers and opportunities specific to recycling in multifamily buildings.

Green Buying: Describes the barriers and motivations for consumer purchases of environmentally preferable products – particularly products with recycled content or less (i.e. source reduced packaging).

Curbside Recycling - The City of Milwaukee: Describes the results of focus group research conducted to improve the City of Milwaukee's understanding of the factors that influence residents' participation in curbside recycling. The research was conducted in conjunction with Staples Marketing and Mosaic Communications. Recommendations for increasing recycling participation were prepared by Aceti Associates.

Curbside Recycling - The City of Milwaukee: In the second half of this report, Aceti Associates lays out a multi-faceted approach for increasing recycling participation in the City of Milwaukee.

Curbside Recycling - The Tunxis Region of Connecticut: Describes the results of phone survey research conducted to improve the Tunxis Recycling Operating Committee's understanding of the factors that influence participation in curbside recycling among the residents of their thirteen member communities in Connecticut.

The Curbside Door Hanger Feedback Strategy: In La Verne, California, distributing weekly feedback to residents via door hangers resulted in a 19% increase in the volume of recyclables set out for collection. The feedback consisted of the quantity of recyclables collected in the neighborhood and on the percentage of households participating in the program.

The Outreach Volunteer Strategy: When outreach volunteers in Claremont, California personally provided non-recycling neighbors with recycling information, 28% of the non-participants began recycling curbside on a weekly basis. In contrast, when recycling information was simply dropped off to another group of non-recyclers, only 12% recycled every week. Other studies have shown that the outreach volunteer strategy can also be used effectively in drop-off communities.

The Commitment Strategy: Residents of Portland, Oregon who signed a commitment to recycle newspaper recycled 253% more than another group that simply had information dropped off at their door. Furthermore, the group that had made a written commitment continued to recycle more than the information-only group even after being informed that their commitment to the project was over.

The School Recycling Incentive Program: In Cambridge, Massachusetts, monetary and non-monetary incentives, combined with other behavior change tools, led public schools to increase paper recycling by 148% over a period of three years.

The Dunkin Donuts Strategy: In Plymouth, Massachusetts, incentives as small as a free cup of coffee were combined with other behavior change tools to build awareness and encourage employee participation in the office paper recycling program in Town Hall. Other strategy elements built commitment to the program among Town Hall custodians.

Waltham Pilot Report: A pilot project conducted in the City of Waltham tested three different strategies that involved distributing a curbside bin decal to residents. The decal displayed photographs of recyclable items.

Dedham Pilot Report: A pilot project conducted in the Town of Dedham, MA tested the impact on recycling rates of providing feedback to residents. The feedback was conveyed via door hangers that displayed the amount of material recycled curbside in the neighborhood each collection day.

The Oakdale Neighborhood Recycling Campaign: A pilot project conducted in the Town of Dedham, MA tested a multifaceted outreach campaign.  The campaign resulted in a 17% increase in the tonnage recycled in the pilot area during the campaign and 10.5% increase in the tonnage recycled during a 7 1/2 month follow up period.

Door Hangers and Door to Door Visits: The Randolph Recycling Campaigns: Two pilot projects conducted in the Town of Randolph, MA in 2005 tested less expensive versions of the Oakdale Neighborhood Recycling Campaign, which was piloted in the Town of Dedham, MA in 2004. 

Instructions for Conducting Focus Groups: It is important to supplement barrier/motivation inventories with focus group research in cases where the barriers and motivations associated with an activity are not well known or well understood. A focus group consists of six to eight residents who have been paid to discuss issues related to the activity that you are trying to promote. Focus groups can also provide useful feedback on the appeal of a proposed strategy. [This description of focus group research excerpted from: McKenzie-Mohr, D. (1999) Fostering Sustainable Behavior An Introduction to Community-Based Social Marketing. Gabriola Island, B.C: New Society Publishers.] Municipal officials can plan and conduct focus groups using these instructions.

Model Bid Specifications for Pilot Project Evaluation: Contracting with a consultant to evaluate your pilot project can be advantageous when data collection is time-intensive, when challenging problems must be resolved in order to develop a suitable evaluation methodology and/or when the evaluation requires statistical expertise that is not available in-house. These model specifications provide a starting point for developing a complete description of your pilot project evaluation needs.

Global Warming Climate Report

Natural Resources Defense Council and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization have published a report on the impact of global warming on the West's climate. In essence, the western half of the country is warming by as much as 1.7F this century.

Please go to www.rockymountainclimate.org for the full report.

Other Climate Change Reporting for New Mexico

The Nature Conservancy reports on climate disruption in New Mexico, Santa Fe New Mexican, May 29, 2008. The report concludes that most of New Mexico’s mid- to high-elevation forests and woodlands have experienced consistently warmer and drier conditions from 1991 to 2005 than the rest of the state, likely contributing to a massive piñon and pine forest die-off, the severity of wildfires, and declines in species populations.

Click here to view the Nature Conservancy Report:

http://www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/states/newmexico/press/press3539.html

Recycling Commodity Prices for July

*Please note that this is a sample of what is being offered in New Mexico for certain commodities.

Recycling Tidbits

Home Depot Launches CFL Recycling Initiative
Home improvement retailer begins national program to collect compact fluorescent light bulbs.
http://www.recyclingtoday.com/News/news.asp?Id=13364

Recycle Offset Credits

RecycleNet Corporation is pleased to introduce the Recycling Offset Credit (ROCs) program.  This program provides a certified measurement system to recognize and reward companies for their recycling efforts.  RecycleNet will issue Recycling Offset Credits (ROCs) for each ton of material recycled by participants.

http://www.recycle.net/offsetcredits/

Calendar

**July 11, NMRC Board Meeting, Bernalillo County, 11 AM. RSVP to english@recyclenewmexico.com

**September 18, NMRC Board Meeting, Los Alamos, 11 AM. RSVP to english@recyclenewmexico.com

**September 20-24, National Recycling Coalition Congress, Pittsburgh, PA. www.nrc-recycle.org

**November 6-7, NMRC Board Retreat, Sevilleta, time TBA. RSVP to english@recyclenewmexico.com

If you have questions about any of the above information or have articles for future Recycling Scraps, please e-mail or call me. 

English Bird

Executive Director

New Mexico Recycling Coalition

PO Box 24364, Santa Fe, NM 87502

english@recyclenewmexico.com

(505) 983-4470

Fax (505) 466-6266