{"id":17312,"date":"2020-05-27T10:33:49","date_gmt":"2020-05-27T14:33:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ilsr.org\/articles\/a-response-to-greenbizs-rebuilding-recycling-to-go-circular\/"},"modified":"2024-05-01T18:24:55","modified_gmt":"2024-05-01T18:24:55","slug":"response-to-circular-economy","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/ilsr.org\/es\/article\/composting-for-community\/response-to-circular-economy","title":{"rendered":"A Response to GreenBiz’s “Rebuilding Recycling to Go Circular”"},"template":"","class_list":["post-17312","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","article_type-article","initiatives-composting-for-community","topics-recycling","authors-neil-seldman"],"acf":{"details":{"featured_image":2833,"background_color":"","article_type":[134],"initiative":15,"display_event_fields":false,"start_date":null,"end_date":null,"start_time":null,"end_time":null,"time_zone":"America\/New_York","virtual_event":false,"location":"","topics":[112],"impact_areas":false,"abstract":"

Dan Knapp has written a response to an article on\u00a0published in GreenBiz, which presented, \u201ca three-step plan to ensure recycling supports the circular economy.\u201d We’ve shared his comments here. … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","authors_tax":[605]},"sidebar":{"title":"\u00cdndice"},"page_layout":[{"acf_fc_layout":"layout_wysiwyg","_acfe_flexible_toggle":null,"component_wysiwyg":{"content":"

<\/div>

Dr. Daniel Knapp has been a thought leader and iconic businessman in the recycling movement since the 1970s, after leaving an earlier career as a sociology professor. In 1978, two years ahead of the event, he famously predicted the explosion of the Lane County, Oregon refuse-derived fuel plant. This catastrophic failure \u2013 of what was at the time being promoted as a form of recycling \u2013 was lampooned four years later<\/a> in Nancy Gorrell\u2019s comic book, “The Lone Recycler,” which was written by four friends, \u201cto combat the evils of wastefulness.\u201d<\/p>\n

With his wife and partner, the environmental writer Mary Lou Van Deventer, their company, Urban Ore, rose from the tipping face of the Berkeley dump using many tools recovered at the site. They practiced the \u201cJust Do it!\u201d motto long before the phrase was trademarked and privatized by Nike.<\/p>\n

Today Urban Ore is a thriving multi million-dollar reuse and recycling enterprise operating everyday from a three acre, four building site in West Berkeley. The enterprise recovers about 8,000 tons of materials per year from multiple sources. About 230 different types of reusables are recognized in their sales areas. Residue sent to landfill is under two per cent. Urban Ore has remained open during the COVID-19 pandemic because it has been deemed an \u201cessential business\u201d by city and county guidance.<\/p>\n

Urban Ore and ILSR have been working partners on numerous projects including the National Recycling Research Agenda, 1979, the Zero Waste Plan for Del Norte, CA, 1981, and scores of anti incineration and zero waste campaigns. In 2007 Urban Ore and ILSR formed the Recycling Archives Project. Their prototype book The Founders\u2019 Hearts is full of stories of discovery, luck, and perseverance, all plucked from from the memories of eight pioneer activists and business people who were active at the start.<\/p>\n

Dan Knapp has written a response to an article on\u00a0published in GreenBiz<\/a> on May 18, 2020, which presented, \u201ca three-step plan to ensure recycling supports the circular economy.\u201d We’ve shared his comments below:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I read the post \u201cRebuilding Recycling to Go Circular.”<\/p>\n

Its goal of closing the loop is laudable, but the question is how best to do it. I think this piece is sounding too many of the wrong notes. It\u2019s vague and overly reliant on \u201cnew technologies\u201d linked to big, concentrated investment. In other words, it\u2019s wanting more of what we\u2019ve been getting from waste industries for over 50 years.<\/p>\n

The approach doesn\u2019t even mention the need to retool residential and commercial curbside for dual stream collection, now that single stream has at last proven itself so incapable of producing clean resources that it wrecked its own markets with unavoidable resource contamination. That new retooling needn\u2019t involve new trucks, just new truck bodies. It does involve retooling the dirty MRFs too, because they are not what we need: \u00a0too big, too complicated and hard to maintain; too expensive to run. And it needs a new approach to contracting that\u2019s closer to mall management, with agreements more like leases that require and incentivize source separation and clean stream production at every level.\u00a0 We don\u2019t need massive \u201cpublic\/private partnerships,\u201d whatever those might be. We need a lot of new end-use industries, many quite small, matched to the materials our economy generates.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t even mention reviving and strengthening the deposit system rather than destroying it, as CalRecycle seems bent on doing here in California.<\/p>\n

We need to revive and strengthen old technologies and protocols that worked and still work. We need investment, yes, but in labor-intensive and skill-intensive resource handling facilities within locally built and operated twelve category resource recovery parks managed by economic development people and priced to reward conservation by offering lower overall costs of disposal. Recyclers need to be paid service fees for handling all those refined materials and making them go away, legally; another thing left out of this nostrum.<\/p>\n

We need maximum entrepreneurial zeal, gazillions of new niche enterprises. I refer people to the book The Founders\u2019 Hearts<\/em>, prepared by the Recycling Archives Project, <\/em>because I think it demonstrates what I mean when I call for old technologies that worked and would still work\u00a0\u2014 if the playing field were not so distorted in favor of wasting. The Founder\u2019s Hearts<\/em> introduces readers to the great stories of the pluck and luck created by citizen activists, entrepreneurs and educators.<\/p>\n

This “circular economy” stuff could be for real, or it could be just more green washing. My guess is it\u2019s both, depending on who is saying it. \u00a0This piece is so fuzzy that it could be anything.<\/p>\n

I am glad that this article was distributed. It\u2019s good to know these things so we can make a case that there is a better way.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dan Knapp, PhD, Urban Ore, Berkeley, CA<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For a free PDF of The Founders\u2019 Hearts, email\u00a0seek@susankinsella.com<\/a>, subject line: Founders Hearts. This is the First Edition, dedicated to May Pon, who co-founded Richmond Environmental Action in San Francisco, and includes terrific, inspiring interviews with Penny Hansen, Gretchen Brewer, Ken Dunn, Tania Levy, Brenda Platt, Nancy Gorrell, Kathy Evans, and Rick Anthony. Dozens more interviews are recorded and in the publication process for future editions, with many more to be added. Knapp, Wynne Coplea, Susan Kinsella, Mary Lou Van Deventer and Neil Seldman edit, curate, and interview for the Founders\u2019 Hearts, which is published by the Recycling Archives Project, soon to be a program of the Earth Island Institute, San Francisco, CA.<\/em><\/p>\n

Photo credit: iStock.com\/nopponpat<\/p>\n

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