NRDC Publishes Recommendations for Recycling Infrastructure Grants

The Environmental Protection Association, or EPA, is developing two grant programs that are funded through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. The first of the EPA's grant programs will target public education and outreach centered around residential and community recycling programs, while the second one aims to improve solid waste infrastructure for recycling.

Two experts with the Healthy People & Thriving Communities Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) published recommendations for ensuring the grant programs' effectiveness.

The first recommendation is that the grant programs include food scraps and other organic material. According to the NRDC, food waste accounts for 24% of landfilled municipal solid waste. Organics, including food scraps, need to be kept separate from the rest of the municipal solid waste stream.

"Recycling food scraps has the potential to divert 20.9 million tons of material from landfills and prevent 4.94M metric tons CO2e of climate pollution from entering the atmosphere per year, as well as produce a net financial benefit of $239.7 million annually," wrote Nina Sevilla and Darby Hoover of the NRDC. "Currently, there are over 5,000 composting facilities nationwide, yet only around 500 facilities accept food scraps."

"Investments are needed to support current composting operations to accept and process food scraps, as well as build new facilities at all scales and add or expand organics collection. Any federal grant programs to support recycling infrastructure should include organics recycling, and explicitly include food scraps as an eligible material."

Next, the NRDC emphasizes the importance of funding assessments, planning efforts, and policies alongside facility upgrades and development of new infrastructure. "Recycling infrastructure is essential to support implementation of these policies, but the planning and assessment processes that need to be carried in order to implement these policies effectively are costly," explained Sevilla and Hoover.

"In addition to facility planning efforts, this grant program should make funds available to states, and local and tribal governments to plan or implement proven policies that reduce food waste in landfills and incinerators through organics recycling and waste prevention."

A third recommendation from the NRDC is to make grant funding available to small-scale collectors and processors in addition to supporting industrial-scale infrastructure. The EPA's grant programs should also incorporate considerations for the optimal methods for managing waste materials, such as anaerobic digestion and composting.

Finally, the NRDC recommends that the funding should go to support education for waste prevention and outreach. Communities can't take advantage of recycling programs if they are not informed about them, or if they do not know how to participate. One important subject to educate on is plastic contamination in wastestreams containing food scraps, according to the council.

"The greatest environmental, economic, and social benefits of food waste reduction are associated with reducing or preventing food from becoming waste, which is reflected in EPA’s food waste management hierarchy highlighting the need for source reduction above all other management strategies," the authors wrote. "Food waste prevention and recycling education and outreach materials can draw from numerous existing resources."