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Zero Waste: From Philosophy to Practical Implementation Transcript
Highlights
Introduction
Patrick Jones: Good afternoon, and welcome to today's internet web seminar, Zero Waste, From Philosophy to Practical Implementation. This seminar is sponsored by the EPA's RCC Web Academy, Recycling and Solid Waste Management Education Series.
I'm Patrick Jones with EPA Contractor, MDB, Incorporated, and I will be handling the technical aspects of today's seminar. While we wait for the others to log-on, I would like to cover a few housekeeping items. By now, you should have the GoToWebinar application running, and should see the welcome presentation on your screen. If you're having technical difficulties using the GoToWebinar you can go to www.GotoWebinar.com 
and click on support and FAQs in the upper left-hand corner of the page.
There may be a short delay of the seminar visuals. Presenters will pause briefly in between slides to compensate for this delay. To ask a question please use the GoToWebinar control panel and type your question in the area that says questions. Click send to submit your question to the moderator.
After today's seminar there will be a short survey. Please take a moment to fill out this survey. Your feedback is vital to helping us ensure we are providing the highest quality speakers and information to meet your needs.
Today's seminar will be moderated by Saskia van Gendt. Saskia van Gendt on green building and resource conservation for EPA's Region 9 Office, covering California, Nevada, Arizona, Hawaii, and the Pacific Islands. Since beginning with the EPA, Saskia has worked on the lifecycle building challenge, a design completion focused on deconstruction and material reuse. She has also helped formulate Region 9's energy and climate change strategy, and works on the West Coast Forum on Climate Change, Waste Prevention, and Recovery and Disposal.
With that, we are ready to start the seminar. I will now turn it over, the seminar, to the Moderator, Saskia. Saskia?
Saskia's Introduction
Saskia van Gendt: Greetings, and welcome to the September 2009 Edition of the Resource Conservation Challenge Web Academy. We are very happy to have all of you joining us. This 90-minute monthly education series is hosted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to provide training and a network opportunity to state and local governments, nongovernmental organizations, and other stakeholders.
As Patrick mentioned, today's topic is on Zero Waste, From Philosophy to Practical Implementation. The Zero Waste philosophy aims to minimize waste and resource consumption in order to conserve energy, mitigate climate change, reuse water use, prevent toxics creation, and minimize ecosystem destruction. With almost one-third of greenhouse gas emissions attributed to creating materials and products, reducing consumption has the potential to significantly affect climate change. It is a commitment to achieving Zero Waste, more as a commitment to achieving Zero Waste, more and more state and local governments and businesses across the country are piloting innovative technologies to reach this goal. From source reduction to product redesign, to reuse, to eliminating incentives for raw material extraction and land filling, the path of Zero Waste requires moving beyond recycling to a more integrated and holistic resource management system.
The format for this webinar will be slightly different from the other webinars. After our three speakers give short presentations, we will facilitate a Panel discussion. The questions collected prior to the webinar, as well as questions received during the webinar, will be posed to our three speakers.
Today we have very knowledgeable speakers lined up. The first speaker is Gary Liss with Gary Liss & Associates. Gary will be talking about local government Zero Waste plans. Following his presentation, we will hear from Kathy Frevert with the California Integrated Waste Management Board. Kathy will talk about California's Zero Waste goal and how extended producer responsibility is an integral part of their implementation plan. For our third and final presentation we will hear from Holly Ellmore of the Green Foodservice Alliance. Holly will talk about the downtime Atlanta Zero Waste Zone.
After each speaker we will pause and answer one or two burning questions if it seems timely. We will also have time at the end of the session for your questions. Thanks, again, for participating. Now, let's get started.
Gary's Bio
Saskia van Gendt:Our first speaker, Gary Liss. Mr. Liss has over 35 years of experience in the solid waste and recycling field. He is now President of Gary Liss & Associates, a Zero Waste consulting firm. Mr. Liss is a leading advocate of Zero Waste and has helped more communities develop Zero Waste plans than anyone else in the U.S. He was a Founder and past President of the National Recycling Coalition and was Secretary to the California State Senate Task Force on Waste Management in 1989, which led to the adoption of AB 939 and related recycling legislation in California. Mr. Liss was also the Solid Waste Program Manager for the City of San Jose, where he initiated and managed the nationally recognized model recycling programs, which resulted in the current overall diversion rate of 62%.Mr. Liss?
Gary's Presentation
Gary Liss: Thank you, Saskia. I'm going to be starting on looking at Zero Waste and the basics of what it means, and then going to what communities are doing to address Zero Waste. I like to start with the basic idea of reduce, reuse, and recycle being really what Zero Waste is all about. It just underscores that we need to focus first on reducing and reusing the materials that we discard, and then recycle and re-compost the rest.
Over the last 10 to 20 years we've focused primarily on recycling, and so we would like to say that we need to go beyond recycling to focus more upstream on reducing and reusing. And the reason that's so important is that for every ton in front of us at the municipal waste landfills there's 71 tons produced upstream from mining, manufacturing, and distribution of products. And in order to get the full benefit of our materials in this country we need to stop the flow of resources being mined and manufactured and distributed and reuse them as many times as possible to have the most efficient economy possible.
That's what Zero Waste is all about, efficiency, focusing first on reducing and reusing, and then recycling and composting the rest. There's actually an official definition of Zero Waste that's the only peer reviewed, internationally accepted definition in the world, that's before you here. And there's two things that are highlighted on the slide, that materials are designed to become resources for others to use, and that we don't want to burn or bury those resources.
When people who are first encountering the issue of Zero Waste think about it, one of the first questions that comes to mind is is this a crazy idea, is it really attainable? And, in that, we highlight that nature is the model. There's three-and-a-half billion years of experience in nature, in working through all of the complex flows of materials and discarded resources from one animal to another. And there are no landfills and no incinerators in nature. Nature is the model.
What we need to do is learn from how nature has done everything that they do and ambient temperature and pressure, natural temperatures, biological temperatures. That's the model that we need to learn from, and when we are confronting a difficult resource issue we need to look at how does nature handle that particular issue. And there's groups, like ZERI, Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives, that has really delved into going beyond just crushing and grinding tools of recycling to really look at chemistry, biology, physics, and natural principles on how to use our resources better.
Another key point is that the message is really Zero Waste, we're darn close. It's all about the journey, not the destination. When you design for Zero Waste everything is on the table and you're working to try and eliminate the waste as much as possible, reuse, and then recycling and compost the rest. But recycling composting is a last resort, and darn close we've translated now into official principles to mean over 90% diverted from landfills and incinerators is generally the goal, the measure of success that most communities adopting Zero Waste have officially adopted. And we've seen that businesses are, in fact, leading the way to over 90% waste reduction.
There are large businesses, small businesses, all over the world, 2,800 businesses in Japan that have adopted Zero Waste as a goal, and 99% have achieved that goal already. And electronics firms, like Hewlett Packard and Rico, organics firms, like Anheuser-Busch, and restaurants in San Francisco, and Pillsbury, Vaughn, Safeway. There's all different types of companies that have achieved over 90% diversion, and those that have achieved it have done so because they have a variety of goals that they are working to address. Then having adopted internal policies to be sustainable businesses. Some are responding to outside requests in Japan. The 2,800 businesses were responding to the Ministry for Trade in the Environment in Japan, who took the Kyoto protocol seriously and asked businesses in Japan to adopt Zero Waste as a goal, and that's how they moved forward.
Many have benefitted from the economics of Zero Waste, realizing tremendous savings and increased efficiencies, and there's a lot of tools that are available in Zero Waste world to help businesses save money, increase their efficiency, reduce their liability, and reduce their global footprint.
I mean marketing obviously has a key tool, Toyota has this add on TV that over the last year that shows the disappearing car made of all natural products and underscores that they're pursuing not only zero emissions but, therefore, Zero Waste as a way of defining themselves as the greenest of the green company in America, and that's gearing to customer and employee loyalty and Zero Waste does communicate that. Toyota, Honda, and Subaru all are Zero Waste companies.
So there's a lot of reasons why businesses adopt Zero Waste, and they save the most money from reducing the waste. They save the next most money from reusing, reuse systems, like returnable shipping containers, and the least amount of money, but if properly structured rates exist they save also from recycling and composting in their community.
Some of the key lessons for Zero Waste that we've learned over the last number of years is someone has to ask that Zero Waste be adopted. And in different communities that's been either an environmental group, an elected or appointed official, staff. We have different examples of how that's been done and how it got started. But the key lesson is someone needs to ask, and it doesn't have to be only staff or only elected officials. The environmental groups from the outside could ask their city to adopt Zero Waste as a goal and to plan for it. So that's a really important aspect of moving forward towards Zero Waste. Connecting with other problems. There's tremendous jobs benefits of a Zero Waste approach instead of burning or burying waste resources. Many communities have come to Zero Waste because they didn't want to site a landfill or an incinerator, and they pursued Zero Waste as an alternative to that.
Now, with climate change, there's a huge connection between wasting and climate change, and we're finding a lot of communities see that the single fastest, most effective thing they can do at the local level to address climate change is to reduce waste and recycle more, Zero Waste initiatives. And in California we have a number of communities that have been working in Zero Waste because of their climate change initiatives. Austin, Texas also is a good example of that, and other communities around the country are pursuing Zero Waste, reducing waste, recycling more as a response to climate change.
Some other key lessons are one of the first things is to adopt the goal for community, that means adopting resolution and saying, We want to be a Zero Waste community. And asking staff to return with the Zero Waste plan. That empowers staff to go off and figure it out. It doesn't ask staff to figure out can we do this or not? By saying, "We want to do it, just tell us how to do it." Is really the message there. And typically the plans that come back define interim goals, generally within five years, getting to 70% to 75% here in California, and a target year to achieve Zero Waste are darn close, generally 90% diversion, typically 20% to 25% in California. Outside of California those goals have been longer term because they don't have as much infrastructure in place in the many areas that we've worked in.
In planning for Zero Waste, one of the most critical things is really involving everyone in the community, having as open a process as possible. Residents and businesses, inviting them to community forums, getting information out, posting on the website. And getting everyone's innovative ideas. Oftentimes, the best ideas are coming from the residents and businesses who can think out of the box and make some of the connections that people who've been involved for a long time haven't really thought of how to do that. And going about planning, the goal is to prioritize policies, programs, and facilities, build alliances, share successes. And we now have new global principles for Zero Waste communities that have just been adopted by the Zero Waste International Alliance and will be a news release will be sent out in the next month highlighting those global principles.
But those outline some of the specific goals that communities that have been doing Zero Waste plans around the world have shown are common to most Zero Waste plans, and so you can go to the - you will be able to go this website and use those as a base for moving forward in your community.
For policy, programs, and facilities, this is really the heart of the Zero Waste planning, trying to get at how to change your local policies, programs, and facilities to support a Zero Waste approach as the end result. And this is what really you need to tailor in each community, looking at what resources you have in place, what policies, what facilities, what infrastructure you have in place. And then filling in the gaps of what you need. Upstream is referring to trying to design waste out, to reduce waste, looking at that 71 tons upstream, that we talked about earlier in the presentation.
And that's typically addressed primarily through EPR, extended producer responsibility initiatives, product stewardship initiatives, bans of products from collection, from land filling, from being allowed to be sold, requiring take back containers, takeout containers to be made of reusable, recyclable or compostable materials, and things of that nature. And downstream is your more traditional planning for recycling that's been going on in America. Looking at policies that require source separation.
For example, most of America required source separation of organics from everything else prior to World War II. We need to go back to those types of policies to keep the food scraps separated from the rest of the materials so the rest of the materials can be sorted more easily. And that's generally a good direction that most communities are moving towards that are embracing Zero Waste. New rules and incentives, we talk about ways to help compensate your haulers to be, having an incentive to reduce waste and recycle more, providing pay as you throw rates for residents. Over 7,000 communities in America have pay as you throw rates for picking up garbage. Those are the types of things that we get into in new rules and incentives.
There's typically dozens of ideas that can be explored in that regard.Looking at additional reuse, recycling, composting, C&D facilities and developing programs. If you don't have them in place, finding out why they're not there and developing them is part of what we're looking at. And downstream looking at your purchases, how to harness the purchasing power of government and all those involved to put your money where your policies are and buy in ways that support Zero Waste.
Changing the culture is another key concept we came up with in LA in the development of the Zero Waste plan for LA that's in progress right now. And that really underscores the importance of getting the word out to the public and getting, using the latest electronic tools, YouTube, and Facebook, and Twitter, and all the tools that are before us, community based social marketing, getting celebrities involved. And in every way that you can, work with the schools to change the culture to embrace the concept of Zero Waste. And focusing on green businesses, green buildings, and green jobs as part and parcel of a Zero Waste program is about, is getting to be more efficient. There's lots of resources out there.
GRN is a leading advocate for Zero Waste in America. They're having a National Recycling and Zero Waste Conference in Devins, Massachusetts October 18 to 21 this year, and hope people can come. Earth Resource Foundation and others are there. Saskia van Gendt: Gary, I'm sorry to interrupt. This is very interesting, and all of the presentations will be posted on RCC Web Academy, including Gary's contact information. So, hopefully, everyone can see that on the screen, as well. We will be coming back to Gary for more of his insights and talking in more depth about some of the issues that he raised. But thank you very much, Gary.
Kathy's Bio
Saskia van Gendt: Our second speaker is Kathy Frevert. Kathy serves as the Team Leader for Extended Producer Responsibility at the California Integrated Waste Management Board, which is currently part of the California Environmental Protection Agency. The team is charged with implementing the Board's strategic directives to develop producer finance and producer management for product discards. Over the past 17 years of the Integrated Waste Management Board Kathy has served as a Facilitator for the State's Environmentally Preferable Purchasing Task Force and the State's first sustainable Building Task Force, in addition to working on several source reduction program development projects. Ms. Frevert.
Kathy's Presentation
Kathy Frevert: I am staff at the Integrated Waste Management Board, and so I just wanted to explain that my perspective then is of staff. And I'm going to be covering our path to Zero Waste and some suggestions for integrating Zero Waste in the program. And in California, our path to Zero Waste really moved along with the passage of the Integrated Waste Management Act in 1989, and this is referred to as AB 939. And this law has in it some goals that are enforceable to achieve 25% diversion by 1995, 50% by the year 2000, and then there is proposed legislation to achieve 75% by 2020. And I think having a clear enforceable goal has been very important, and I think it's also important to note that this -- the Zero Waste policy is not a regulated goal. It's a larger vision.
And on this graph you can see our path in terms of increased diversion. The middle line appears red on my screen, shows our diversion rate. And you can see it steadily increasing over the years. It's somewhat disheartening to see that the top line, which is our disposal, is about the same today as it was 20 years ago. So despite our great efforts to increase diversion we still are putting a lot in landfills, and it highlights the need to do more and to look more upstream, as Gary indicated in his presentation.
As one approaches programs, and this applies to many programs, it's really important to get buy- in from the top, and this is where policies, ordinances, and laws give the green light and direction for the programs. And then the programs ultimately need to educate or motivate some end user or stakeholder to not only understand what needs to be done but to actually make a change. So in terms of our policy, the Waste Board introduced Zero Waste California as a policy in 2001 with the Board's strategic plan. And I think it's really interesting to see how this concept of Zero Waste has spread, and this is a sample Zero Waste policy from a large retailer. And when we start seeing this become mainstream and being more accepted it's very, very encouraging. And I think it really highlights one important benefit that we do get from Zero Waste is that it helps people think beyond incremental improvements, to thinking beyond the box and what they can really do. And in this case the policy does come from Wal-Mart.
So, some basic strategies to achieve Zero Waste. Gary I think did an excellent job of covering these, so I won't go into those in more detail.In terms of the Board program, in 2001 our strategic plan centered the activities around these topics - waste prevention, product stewardship, procurement, and green building. And there were about 59 activities underneath these headings. And I'm going to spend a little bit of time on product stewardship and procurement, because those are the topics I've been working on more recently. And it's important to understand kind of where we are when we look at waste, look at product stewardship.
And, first of all, we currently operate under two separate systems, where for many products we have producers that make a product and deliver it, we buy it at the store, and then as consumers we use it. So that's one system. And then there's a separate system to manage the discards. And this is one where local governments become financially responsible for collecting and managing the disposal of the goods. And the local governments don't have any input as to how these products are created and how difficult they are to recycle. Likewise, the manufacturers really don't have an incentive to design them for better material recovery. And this is where for some products, product stewardship is a better way. And what it does is it shifts the responsibility and the cost from the taxpayers to the producers.
So product stewardship, I also want to mention, it does go by the term "extended producer responsibility," or "EPR" for short. You'll also see "producer responsibility," so those are all terms that are generally referring to the same thing. So under EPR it would shift responsibility for the impacts and costs primarily to the producers as the entity that is best able to redesign products, and this creates a link between production and waste management. So instead requiring local governments to fund collection and recovery programs for discarded products, the stewardship programs incorporate the cost of disposal or recovery into the cost of the product, so these costs are borne jointly by the producer and the consumer, not the local government or taxpayer. And because waste management expenses go down when products are designed for easy reuse or recycling it encourages green design.
Now, this next slide is a diagram that illustrates Zero Waste combined with product stewardship. And it -- this flow is one that you've seen before, where materials cycle around and they're recycled, or in this case they can be biodegraded. If they're biodegradable they can safely go back to the earth. And I wanted to just highlight the role of government, because government in a product stewardship system has the role of ensuring a level playing field. And that means establishing rules and making sure that those rules are fairly applied to producers making the same kind of products.
The brand owner you might think of as like a conductor. Currently, brand owners will negotiate contracts with manufacturers to make their products, and they'll negotiate contracts with retailers to sell their products. And in this case under a product stewardship scenario they would also negotiate contracts with haulers, collectors, and local governments, either individually or collectively. Some of the benefits of product stewardship is that it does end the government subsidy, that I mentioned. It supports the economy because we know recycling creates jobs. It streamlines government, especially when we compare the agency staffing required to implement product stewardship programs compared to other programs that we have to manage difficult products. And it also provides environmental benefits.
As Gary mentioned, there is a good opportunity, if you are working on climate change strategy to be -- to incorporate Zero Waste and other related activities in those plans. And then I just wanted to end with a few comments about environmentally preferable purchasing. I think there is opportunity to do more to incorporate standards and certification into contracts. And then once we have these contracts with the references to certifications and standards we need to take advantage of some of the provisions in them.
And a brief example of this would be for computers, there is a certification called EpETE, and it incorporates green design and it also has a provision that if you are EpETE certified you offer a take back of your product. Well, that only occurs if the contract actually asks for it. So that's where it's important to note standards are out there, to refer to them in contracts and then take advantage of what they offer within them. There's also a need to make it easier to find environmentally preferable products that can be purchased. And there are contracts where you'll have thousands of products under one umbrella contract. And within that, only some of them will be environmentally preferable. And it may be difficult to find those.
And then, finally, there's more that needs to be done to educate the consumers using the contract, about the benefits of environmentally preferable products so they look for them and purchase them. So a few parting thoughts are that Zero Waste is a leadership vision that inspires. Product stewardship creates incentives for product design changes that are fundamental to getting greater material recovery. And there is good opportunity to advance Zero Waste through procurement.
Question for Kathy
Saskia van Gendt: Thank you, Kathy. I do have one quick follow-up question about product stewardship. If producers are not currently responsible or liable for resource consumption or waste management associated with their project, products, what is their incentive to get onboard?
Kathy Frevert: Well, in some cases, an incentive can be to -- if you get the material - if you take, for example, some of the electronic products, there's a lot of value in those electronic products. And it is becoming in some cases harder to find the virgin materials. So by having a recovery system for your products you have the ability to basically mine your own products, your old products instead of going out to the marketplace for those basic ingredients that you need. And if you look at companies, like Sony, Sony is establishing or has established a product stewardship network for their own products. And there's a number of other companies that are doing it also.
Holly's Bio
Saskia van Gendt: Our final speaker today is Holly Ellmore. Ms. Ellmore is the Founder and Executive Director of the Green Foodservice Alliance, an affiliate of the Georgia Restaurant Association. The GSA works with pioneers in the industry on creating templates for eco friendly policies and procedures for others to follow. Holly has over 15 years of experience in the food service arena. In February 2009 the Zero Waste Zone in downtown Atlanta, a partnership of GSA and Atlanta Recycles, was announced as the first such zone in the southwest and one of the first in the nation. The focus for this charter is participants of the largest food service operations in the Zero Waste Zone, including convention facilities, event and entertainment venues, hotels and restaurants. In the second phase, all food service operators will be recruited for participation. Ms. Ellmore?
Holly's Presentation
Holly Ellmore: Thank you very much. I appreciate having the honor of being on this webinar. And what I'll do is start out with a little bit about what the Green Foodservice Alliance is, how we've taken more of an industry approach, and then go into how to create a Zero Waste Zone, what did we do and how can that be done in other communities and other industries.
The Green Foodservice Alliance is an affiliate of the Georgia Restaurant Association, and our mission is to create and implement sustainable best practices in the food service industry. And we define food service as any facility or operation that preps or processes food for direct consumption by the end user. And when you define the industry this way, it goes beyond restaurants and hotels, it goes into all of the institutional type food service, which would be public school systems, healthcare, college campuses, corporate office buildings. And it is the second largest employer in the nation.
And the driving force behind the Zero Waste Zone downtown Atlanta was the City of Atlanta lost a convention to the City of Orlando last year because the other City was perceived as a greener City. And what that did for us is that gave us an economic tool. It took the "going green" away from the ROI, the return on investment only concerns, and put it into what I call the "big R," revenue. Atlanta is a convention driven City.
And so now I'd like to -- the first thing to do if you're going to be creating a Zero Waste Zone from an industry consumer standpoint is decide on your target industry segment. For us it was natural, it was the food service industry. Second, what's very important to do, is assess what is the supplier infrastructure available to your zone participants? Is there a permitted food composting facility in economic distance if you're going to be within the food service? How are the recycling? What is that economic viability for the infrastructure? And then you have to determine what your zone participation criteria is, what is it going-- I suggest that you come up with three types of items that are low hanging fruit, something that's relatively easy to do for the industry but yet it's not being done, and ones that are either cost neutral or cost savings.
For our industry, we decided that it was the spent grease that comes from fire, oil, we call it "spent grease," used for the local production of biofuel, that recoverable products are hauled for recycling, and that you participate in donating or composting of all your excess food and food residuals.
The next thing that you do is you've got to build your Zero Waste Zone Team. And one of the reasons for the success of the Zero Waste Zone Team here in Atlanta is because we've taken a real team approach. We've worked with the Federal Government, the EPA, Region 4 has been instrumental and invaluable to us. We have the State Government, not only the Department of Agriculture, our Department of Community Affairs, but the Sustainability Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources has just been a major ally of ours. We've went to the City and the County Governments, and we pretty much with the furloughs going on and the economic structure there, they basically gave us support versus being full rate participants. The industry trade associations, that is the Georgia Restaurant Association and the Green Foodservice Alliance.
We went to the business associations. We're doing expansion of the zones outside of the downtown area, so midtown is another one of our business districts in Atlanta and the midtown alliance, the business association there is taking on the administration and the marketing of the zone. Then you go to the nonprofits. Atlanta Recycles, Georgia Recycling Coalition, those type of organizations, they've been invaluable to us. They've got the resources. They have the expertise in the area, and they have been more than willing to give the support. In fact, the downtown, Zero Waste Zone Downtown Atlanta is now an Atlanta recycling project that we do in partnership with them.
And then it was also important to find for an overall project, a Zero Waste Zone chairperson. We looked for someone who was media savvy, could open up political and business doors for us. And, most importantly, was integrity, walk their talk. And Laura Turner Sydell said the big yes for us on that one. And then we also, what's not on here, is to having a zone champion before anyone of our other zones have been started we have a business, whether it's the Doubletree Hotel or a local restaurant group, Fifth Rib, that has already met the zone criteria and they're ready to be a champion.
Then we've got to decide, get your launch going, how are you going to launch it? We scheduled a Zero Waste Zone participants' meeting where we invite potential participants in the zone to come, and we explain what is the criteria, what are the parameters. We -- and then they always have a pledge that they would sign at this meeting. The pledges are not legally binding, and they have three months to complete them.
You develop a media and publicity plan. One of the big successes of the Zero Waste in downtown Atlanta has been the phenomenal media. We launched on February 10th with a big press conference. And the EPA acting regional director led off that press conference and we had other city officials and that involved in it. We got 3.2 million media impressions in three weeks. We have a CNN story that has gotten 132,000 viewings, and we've gotten 16 million media impressions since February 10th.
That has been one of the biggest drivers on building the zones because now everybody understands how important they are and they'd like to get involved while they can still be pioneers. You've got to introduce the suppliers. That was first and then we'd go through and make sure that they're sustainable suppliers, that they're going to be around, that they have an operation that operates with integrity and that they have great customer service.
And then zone pledges I already mentioned. And then, of course, follow-up is always important. Once they sign on, let's make sure do they know what to do, how do we educate them further. And tips for success is you develop a series of phasings of the pledge.
One of the things that we realized is if you try to accomplish too much too fast a lot of times those big steps end up in being a stumble instead of a stride forward. So what we did for the food service is we've had three major phases. We have the back of the house, where in theory you have control over what the employees actions are. Then you go to the front of the house -- that's, now you're introducing the concept to your customers, the ones that pay you. And then we go to the entire property.
I've already mentioned this, and I can't stress it enough, it's driving the cost savings, the economic times, at least in the food service industry we're not willing to entertain if it's going to cost them. And establish a Zero Waste Zone training program. Our biggest challenge right now in the Zero Waste Zone is contamination of the feedstock, educating on how to establish a clean feedstock within the business.
And then there's zone completion. What I love about the way we've designed the Zero Waste Zone is when you're done, you're done. We have new contracts in place and we have new standard operating procedures, and the industry has evolved. And what I also recommend that you do is you develop a plan to expand beyond the industry. That's why we have a brand of recycles involved, the Green Foodservice Alliance, because we look at the Green Foodservice Alliance as an engine, and we come in with this industry that is one of the second largest in the nation. And, but once we're done there, then this other organization takes it on to corporate, retail, residential, and general public areas.
And then the Zero Waste Zone network is established and they can implement it into other sustainable industry practices, and that's a key thing for us. I look at the Zero Waste Zone as a big launch pad for us. I understand and appreciate the importance of diverting the organic matter into recoverable products from the landfills, but I also understand that once we have the Zero Waste Zone network established we can come back into the cleaning and pest control and other types of items that we can work on, whether it's packaging and that to clean-up an entire industry.
And another thing that's really fun in the food service industry is we have interesting ways that we can complete the circle. Many of our Zero Waste Zone participants have planted their on premise urban vegetable gardens, and that they serve back to their customers. They take the compost from -- the food residuals from their kitchens and they place them, they use it to grow the gardens. And it's reduced some of their costs and it's also been just a lot of fun. The customers love it.
The picture that you see here is the Doubletree Hotel in Buckhead, and the gentleman to the right is Bobby Wilson. He's with the University of Georgia's Master Gardening Program, and they have a volunteer requirement in that program, so he's helping us with establishing these gardens and it's of no cost to our participants. And then in other ways, Emory University, they're one of our Zero Waste Zone participants for academia, they're going to be leading the charge there. And they use -- their campus buses are powered by the bio fuel for -- that was made from the spent grease on their campus.
And what I love to emphasize is Zero Waste Zones are just the beginning, and thank you very much.
Question for Holly
Saskia van Gendt: Thank you. And I do have one quick follow-up question, can you explain a little bit more about the contamination and maybe provide some advice for reducing contamination?
Holly Ellmore: The advice for reducing contamination is training and education. And one of the things that we're going to be incorporating into that is to understand the food service industry, the individuals that are in general participating in most of the source separation in the kitchens, they're hourly employees. English and Spanish are no longer the common language in many cases, so the training program that we're developing is going to be very nonverbal in nature. Yes, it will be in Spanish and English, but we'll have lots of pictures associated with it, and we're also getting ready to start talking about let's get some color coding going, so we have a standard of what colors are used for is it green for what goes to compost, blue for recycling, and black for what might be left for trash.
Panel Questions
Saskia van Gendt: Thank you. And it looks like we have about 40 minutes remaining, and during this time we are going to open up to all of the Panelists to facilitate a discussion. If you have not already submitted questions please use the control panel on GoToMeeting to submit questions. And for the first question, I'll direct this to Gary, you spoke a little bit about this in your presentation, but can you elaborate how specifically Zero Waste can be integrated into climate actionplans? Gary?
Gary Liss: I was muted, sorry. Climate action plans generally have two components - the inventory and then the plan, themselves. One of the things that communities should make sure that they address is in the checklist for the inventories, looking at all the used recycling, composting facilities that they use, the landfills, incinerators as part of the inventory of what they're doing, apply the WARM model, W-A-R-M, that the EPA has developed to calculate the climate change impacts of the existing facilities, and then in the plan do the types of things we talked about in my presentation about addressing what new policies, programs, and facilities are needed to get to Zero Waste.
Most of the climate change plans at the local level have a waste component to it, but they don't emphasize Zero Waste necessarily. The only climate change initiative that does is the urban environmental accords, and we encourage people that are doing cool cities or other types of - and [Hinckley], and other types of climate change initiatives to also look at the urban environmental accords, which having been hosted in San Francisco, there's a link at the City of San Francisco website for that.
So Zero Waste can be included in the climate change plans, and typically what's done is in the plans they address it at a high level, set a goal for Zero Waste in a climate change plan, and say we need to do more reuse, recycling, composting. And then they say develop a more detailed Zero Waste plan that will explore how to actually accomplish those steps, and that's what most communities getting into this are doing.
Saskia van Gendt: Excellent. Thank you. The next question is how can we balance short-term goals of economic development with long-term environmental goals to reduce consumption and waste? And maybe part of this could be what is the magnitude of job creation from resource management options? And I'll start with Kathy on this question.
Kathy Frevert:Well, we do have research so that we do know that recycling creates more jobs, and if you want later on I could provide a link to the report that the Board did on this a few years ago. I do think that overall we do need to do a better job of tracking program results because that can help sell the programs, but it's something that, at least in product stewardship we're looking at this question right now about how can we better document the impact from the benefits.
And I guess I'll say something else along just the environmental goals and measuring them, that I do think that this is a role that perhaps the U.S. EPA could help out with in some respects, because I think it's important that we look at how we track things in a consistent manner so we can compare programs across state boundaries or across regions. And so that's another challenge we have. But we do know that recycling does create more jobs, that's been documented.
Gary Liss: Saskia, this is Gary. Can I just comment that the recycling industry is as large as the automobile industry in America. EPA did document with the National Recycling Coalition through the Recycling Economic Information Project that it's five times the size of the waste industry in America. The Institute for Local Self-reliance highlights that for 10,000 tons of material if you landfill it, one job is created. If you compost 10,000 tons you get four jobs. If you recycle 10,000 tons of material you get 10 jobs. And if you reuse 10,000 tons of material you get 75 to 250 jobs. So the magnitude of jobs is huge.
With the economic stimulus as a priority going on around the country the stimulus monies have recognized recycling as one of the eligible activities under the energy efficiency block grants and in other aspects of the economic stimulus package. Recyclers should be all over this. St. Louis got millions of dollars for their [murph] out of the stimulus money and to expand their curbside progrms. Everyone in the country in recycling should be pursuing economic stimulus money because of the huge job connection.
Holly Ellmore: This is Holly. I come from a different angle. In the hospitality industry we have found this, business decisions are being made by the clients using our industry on what are your practices, how are you walking your talk. And it's no longer just acceptable that you will make, do recycling or use composting at a particular event. They choose to see that your entire facility is working towards Zero Waste Zone.So in our brochure for a busier Zero Waste Zone Program we have one of the reasons to participate is revenue generation and revenue retention. So that's prevention of layoffs of your employees because you keep your business activity up, and then also if you can grow it then you will increase your number of employees.Saskia van Gendt: We have a question here from online, and for towns or maybe even states that have a lot of money invested in traditional waste treatments, such as incineration or waste energy, what are some good ways to move away from these towards a Zero Waste goal?
Gary Liss: This is Gary. On things to move away from, the incinerators don't want to burn non-recyclable materials, so any community that has an incinerator generally would have the opportunity to recycle as much as they can of metals and glass and non -- inorganic materials. So that suggests looking at your construction demolition stream, which is typically on the order of 20% of communities' total amount of waste disposed of. There's lots of opportunities for recycling more there. The commercial stream is typically 50% to 70% of a community's activities. There's a lot more scrap metals and stuff that could be taken out.
The contracts for incinerators are term, so you look into when does -- when do those contracts end, and look at what type of commitments are made, you have to feed it. Can you feed it from a larger distance? So instead of keeping everything flowing the way it has been, if you wanted to start reducing waste more, composting some of the organics, shifting the obligation to feed the incinerator to a broader geographic area would it enable you to deal with the transition during the term of the contract, and then so you should not feel that you're limited by those contract terms for "put or pay" of materials.
So I think, like in any community, whether you have an incinerator commitment or not, some of the first steps are looking at adopting a Zero Waste goal, and identifying leaders in your community who are models, particularly in the business community, that can lead the way. Nothing talks louder than talking about a local business that's at 70%, 80%, 90% waste diversion, and if they're over 90% we call them a Zero Waste business. So looking for your Zero Waste businesses in your community and promoting them widely is a first step. Doing Zero Waste events or Zero Waste venues, like the Zero Waste Zone in Atlanta, these are all tangible steps forward that could be getting people used to the idea of Zero Waste, and then doing education and training about how to go forward beyond that.
Saskia van Gendt: Great. I have a question here about procurement strategies. Kathy, you addressed a little bit of this in your presentation. Do you have any tools or templates that would be available to make strategic choices related to procurement? And which kind of procurement strategies would maybe be applicable at the local government scale or business scale, as well?Kathy Frevert: Well, one resource that I would, a couple of resources I'd recommend people check out. The responsible purchasing network, and it maintains a list of -- they have guides on all these different products, and they have information about different certifications you can look for for different products. They'll have sample contracts that you could look at and get -- borrow language from. So I think that's a really good resource.
And then, also, in California, with our Department of General Services, we have worked on an environmentally preferable purchasing best practices manual, and it covers over 42 product categories. And in that we go into in-depth descriptions of what are some of the things to look for for that particular product, because each product is different. And so it's in one sense hard to make an across-the-board statement about what to look for because it does vary so much product to product.
But in terms of some basic strategies, if you are writing contracts then it's important to reference certifications or performance standards where you can, and sometimes you can just do that by reference. So one line saying the computer shall be EPA silver certified, you've captured in a whole certification program in one sentence. And that's something that makes it much easier for the purchasing officials to deal with.
So, and then another thing is just to make it visible to the consumers that these are out -- that these products do have environmental benefits. And I guess one other thing I'd highlight is that there are contracts that you can purchase off of, and I think most people in the procurement world are very familiar with some of the leveraged contracts, and some of the larger contracts that are out there that they can purchase on. And by purchasing off somebody else's green contract you don't have to do all the work for it.
Gary Liss: This is Gary. Just a couple other ideas. The precautionary principle is something that the City and County of San Francisco has adopted, which is an incredibly powerful tool in the purchasing arena. And what the precautionary principle basically says is do no harm. If you're using toxic materials, how do you look at -- can you do without that toxic material, can you reduce the amount of it, are there alternatives out there, can you design it out instead of having pesticides and herbicides to protect lawns or plantings, maybe you could do with -- use a native species and not need that, at all.So the precautionary principle basically sets up a process by which the amount of wastefulness and the toxicity of the wasting that goes on is considered in the procurement process. And the City of San Francisco does that for all of its purchases and has a very elaborate expansive program that implements that very successfully. Another resource is the Green Purchasing Institute, which has worked on making the connections between Zero Waste and environmentally preferable purchasing and they're based in Berkeley.
Saskia van Gendt: And all of the sites that people are referencing, as well as Gary's Green Jobs data, we'll make a point to make sure that that information is available to all the participants. Holly, did procurement play a large role from the businesses that you worked with on the Zero Waste Zone in Atlanta?
Holly Ellmore: It will. What we're doing now is working with what are your current operating practices, and let's make sure that we divert as much of what you're currently doing from the landfills as possible. And then let's start doing waste audits. What's in there? Number one, how can you source reduce? How can you 25% of all feed purchased is thrown out, how can we stop buying so much?
And, number two, we're going to be working on packaging, because what I estimate is that a good portion -- once we've gotten most of these Zero Waste Zones in place, when we start looking at the dumpsters and doing the waste audits, it'll be mainly from packaging. Not only what the food, itself, is packaged in, think of like ketchup, little ketchup packets and mayonnaise packets, but also how it comes in about the different boxes, the different - you know, are they using Styrofoam for things, what type of plastics, all of that? So we are working -- it'll be in probably a stage two or stage three of our program.
Kathy Frevert: This is Kathy, again. If I may just add something to what I said earlier?
Saskia van Gendt: Sure.
Kathy Frevert: There's another area -- for anyone working on contracts, if you are doing a request for proposal, there are all kinds of creative things you can do with points, where you recognize, you award extra points for best vendors that are doing certain things. And you could have in there, incorporate do they have an environmental management system within their business? Are they, you know, you can go into all these different environmental criteria, does the product meet it, or not? And it doesn't make it that it has to be in the product, but it does recognize those that do have it. So I just wanted to mention that.
Gary Liss: And this is Gary. On the purchasing, one of the great examples Kathy highlighted was Wal-Mart's purchasing. They adopted the goal of Zero Waste a couple years ago, and they turned to their suppliers and said, "How are we going to meet it?" Businesses know how to use supply chain management. They use purchasing all the time to get what they want. Rico did a great job in working with their suppliers to -- they came up with the five Rs, in addition to reduce, reuse, recycle, refuse and return. They told their suppliers, "We refuse anything that would become a waste for us, and if you can't figure out how not to give us your waste, take it back, return it to the vendor." And Rico also then went on to ask their suppliers to share their values and be a Zero Waste company, themselves. And one of their suppliers, Memory Experts, took that to heart, adopted Zero Waste and was at Zero Waste within three months with the good support of Rico. So the purchasing power, particularly in the business community, is one of the most significant tools that can be used to get to Zero Waste quickly.
Holly Ellmore: And this is Holly, again. One thing, we had our second meeting yesterday on what we're calling for right now, Zero Waste Zone vendors. And bring the wide variety of the different vendors to the big service industry to the table, just sit there and say, "How can we create, take the template that we've done for the food service industry and how can we take and apply it to the suppliers?" And we're having the suppliers come up with what that criteria will be, and we anticipate at some point next year we'll have additional criteria to participate in the Zero Waste Zone will be you will demand that your suppliers adhere to these. And it won't just be Zero Waste, it will be all sorts of other environmental practices, how they're cleaning, what type of chemicals they're using, and those types of things.
Saskia van Gendt: And we have a question here about what other kind of no brainers that governments or businesses should take for the first steps that are easy, fast, perhaps cheap? And, Gary, let's start with you?
Gary Liss: I mentioned some earlier -- the first thing is to adopt the goal. If you don't have the goal adopted, it's really hard for people within the system to respond to it. So adopt a Zero Waste goal either for the company or the community, and develop a plan for it, or adopt doing Zero Waste in some way, having a Zero Waste lunch, a Zero Waste event, Zero Waste at a particular facility that you have more control over. Somehow getting Zero Waste going in the area is really one of the keys, so people can see more tangibly what you're talking about to do that.
Another thing is identify Zero Waste businesses in your community and promote them. Have workshops or lunch meetings or breakfast meetings where you spotlight them and what they're doing and how they're doing it. Because in every community we've been in around the country we've found Zero Waste businesses or ones that are darn close. And that's what really gets the message across that this is practical and doable in their own community.
So the other thing to really remember is focusing first on reducing, designing waste out, getting reuse systems going. Returnable shipping containers is one of the big no brainers. In Telluride where we did a Zero Waste plan, the deli, the local deli said they went to returnable shipping containers that paid for themselves in a week for their little deli.
And [New Me] has saved millions, and Toyota have saved millions of dollars a year from using returnable shipping containers. So returnable shipping containers is one of the reuse systems that's a no brainer that virtually everyone can implement in some aspect of their business activities.And looking at where is waste created in the first place.
Holly mentioned doing the business, the waste audits. That's one of the first steps, know what you're discarding and figuring out why is that amount of material going to waste, and so it doesn't have to be an elaborate thing, it can be as simple as dumpster diving, doing a random sample of a small quantity of waste. It's real quick, you'll see what are the big things that are being discarded from any community, from any business. And once you see what are the biggest things and the most toxic things, then you look to find out, "Well, what's missing? Why are those going to waste? What's wrong in our directions that lead us to waste that? Or what services are missing?" And if there are missing services, then you go and try and figure out how do we set-up those services, and that's where working public/private partnerships with the community and service providers, and figuring out what you can do to do that.
When I go into a community, I say the Zero Waste budget at least initially is what they're spending for garbage collection and disposal today, and you're just spending it in the wrong places. So look at your budget, look at what you're spending your money on, and there's where you can have a dramatic affect quickly because you'll find that you can restructure what types of services you're paying for and add recycling services, reuse services, composting services, and pay for them out of the avoided costs of garbage collection and disposal.
Saskia van Gendt: Kathy, I know that California is seen as a leader in the Zero Waste movement. Based on California's experiences, what policies and goals do you think have led to the most significant progress towards Zero Waste?
Kathy Frevert: Well, I mentioned before having some enforceable goals in AB 939. I think that that has been very instrumental, and it continues. And we still have a lot more work to do, but I think it's really helped bring all the, the whole State, it's involved the whole State, and that's really important.
Saskia van Gendt: Can you be a little more specific about those enforceable goals?
Kathy Frevert: Oh, well, what AB 939 did is, I mentioned the goals before, that it was to achieve 25% diversion by 1995 and 50% by 2000. And it requires that local governments prepare, adopt, and implement planning documents to achieve these goals, so the responsibility is on local government to achieve these goals. And there are penalties that can be implemented for not achieving them. So the whole State has been working hard at achieving them. Now, it's kind of interesting in the area of commercial recycling. That one is -- was brought up in the climate change strategy, that we need to address commercial recycling. And so there's regulations being developed on commercial recycling now that is being driven in part then from the climate change strategy.
Gary Liss: This is Gary. The fine was a $10,000 a day fine for local governments that didn't proceed in good faith to plan for and implement in good faith their source reduction and recycling elements under AB 939. It's the only state law in the nation that had that type of penalty. And local governments agreed to that in the early days of the '80s because what was on the table at the time was incinerator proposals to preempt local government, land use authority, and have the state cite incinerators because they said local governments were proving that they could not do that, and local governments said, "What do you mean, you never asked us to do anything?"
And so the State law came up with asking local governments to work towards achieving 50% diversion, and the State now is at I think 54% overall diversion. So it's a major success in California. The penalties weren't levied in hardly any cases, but the fact that they were out there had the state take the political heat for having adopted this goal. And then everyone at the local level could blame the State and say, "The State is forcing us to do this, and so this is how we're responding with our programs to meet that State goal that they're forcing us to do with the fine as the stick." And what's happened is we find that the carrot has -- of successful implementation of recycling and waste diversion in California has been far greater than the stick. The stick hardly had to be used, at all, the public loves recycling. More people recycle than vote in America. They want to have it easy and convenient for them at home, at work, and at play, and that's what the State law did in California, put in the infrastructure to get us much further down the road for doing that.
Saskia van Gendt: Thank you. We're getting a lot of questions online about extended producer responsibility. And, Kathy, you had great information about that in your presentation from a State level. I'm wondering if you have any insight about the local government role and extended producer responsibility?
Kathy Frevert: Well, one thing to note with producer responsibility is that each program can be designed differently. So it's impossible to say across the board it would always work in such and such a way. The way we see it being implemented, for example, in British Columbia, with some of the programs there, is that they tend -- when there is a stewardship organization, which means that collectively the producers or brand owners go together and they hire someone to carry out this end of life product management responsibility. And that stewardship organization will then typically first approach local government and ask, "Do you want to continue with this responsibility of collecting the material?" And if the response is, "yes," then they negotiate a contract. And so instead of the local government just doing it, they get compensated for it. In some cases the local government may not want to continue with that responsibility and so then they bow out and the stewardship organization would then find other service providers to provide that service. So that's one way it can work.
Gary Liss: And the local role for EPR -- this is Gary -- there are a couple of things, bans, fees, and take backs. In New York City they adopted a law that anyone who sells electronics has to take back the electronic waste at the end of the life, and that legal authority was based on the State Municipal Solid Waste Law, requiring local governments to provide for how to deal with these types of issues. Fees on plastic bags is a great example. Dublin reduced their plastic bags by 95% by adopting fees on plastic bags. Other communities have pursued that. Bans on products at the local level have been implemented to ban Styrofoam containers, ban plastic bags, bags in general. And so the bans can be of products, from being sold, they can be bans on you can't put stuff in the landfill, like leaves, and about 30 states are banned from landfilling.
In the Carolinas they ban cardboard because it's very recyclable, you don't put cardboard in the landfills in the Carolinas. So bans, fees, and take backs are all things that are trying to address producer responsibility and product stewardship. And the pure EPR is trying to get the brand owners responsible, and that's mostly being done at the state and federal level, so support of local governments for state product stewardship councils is critically important. Those are being set-up all over the nation now. There's half a dozen of them that have been set-up already and more that are coming. There's groups, like the Product Stewardship Institute and the Product Policy Institute that are helping local governments work together on EPR to advance these types of initiatives.
Kathy Frevert: Yes, and following up with what Gary commented is that because there is this burden to local governments there are more and more that are establishing their local ordinances and responding locally. And there is a concern that there's going to be this tremendous patchwork of different approaches and rules that vary from community to community, and that could be extremely challenging for brand owners, producers, retailers. And so that's why we do seek to have a more comprehensive approach, which the State has put forth in an extended producer responsibility framework approach.
Gary Liss: And the local government's pursuing a variety of patchwork of things actually supports moving forward with state and national efforts. The more confusing it is at the local level, the more impetus there will be to get more consistent statewide or national approach to any particular product.
Saskia van Gendt: Wonderful. Thank you, guys. Holly, you had a lot of great information about businesses and how they were using their Zero Waste as marketing. Can you also elaborate on how businesses are using the business case for Zero Waste and using that to their advantage?
Holly Ellmore: Well, it makes economic sense from both the revenue standpoint, which we've obviously already addressed from the PR and that, but it also -- what we've found out here in Georgia with the way the tipping fees work and the way the waste hauling contracts are set-up, that our Zero Waste Zone participants are, most of them, we say cost neutral but a lot are saving money. I believe at downtown hotels they're going to save around $1,500 per month on the waste hauling contract. There's a local country club that's saving about $650 to $700 per month by going and revamping the way they're structuring what used to be considered trash.
And I would also like to add -- I keep forgetting to mention, we do have our first dumpster free restaurant in Atlanta, Echo in our midtown area, and the restaurant group, Fifth Group, is working on becoming the first dumpster free restaurant group. So that's thrilling and exciting. Yes, it does have good PR, but it's also just really important to do and to be cost neutral and it's not costing them anything.
Gary Liss: One of the other business cases is reducing liability. A lot of businesses, particularly more conservative controllers, will listen really carefully when you highlight that under CERCLA, the Superfund, every ton of waste that a business disposes of in a landfill or an incinerator is their liability forever. So if that landfill leaks the accountants and attorneys just go and look at how much was contributed by who, and they send a bill proportionate to their input to the landfill to clean-up the mess. And this has happened repeatedly around the country, so reducing liability is something that in more conservative areas in the communities and the businesses find as a really important reason for moving to reduce their waste, so they reduce their liability.
Holly Ellmore: And another benefit that our participants have found is employee morale. The employees are very excited to participate in this. It gives them renewed loyalty to the business. And what also I love is I mentioned at the beginning of my program was that we're the second largest employer in the nation behind the government. So by having an industry like ours be an energizer in this, we're also serving as an educator to the consumer because these employees are going home now and saying, "Wait, I can do this at home." Everyone has a kitchen, everyone eats. So that's a really nice kind of side benefit that our participants (inaudible).
Saskia van Gendt: Holly had mentioned landfill tipping fees as a way to make it more economically viable for our businesses, but also a lot of times local governments will use landfill tipping fees to fund non solid waste related programs to reduce, to increase recycling programs. As the communities reduce waste, what new financing mechanisms will be needed to make-up for potential funding that could be lost from waste disposal?
Gary Liss: This is Gary. Some of the transition costs can be obtained through landfill surcharges. In San Jose they charge $19.62 a ton for every ton buried, some of which goes to the general fund, some funds local programs. In Europe the average response to the European requirement to phase organics out of landfills has been instituting a $20 to $40 a ton landfill surcharges to help fund the infrastructure needed to shift from wasteful practices. So on an interim basis, landfill surcharges are a key tool for funding initiatives, and not landfill surcharges alone but wasting surcharges. In San Jose 58% of all the revenue for waste services goes to the City, not the hauler. They have the combination of AB 939 fees and franchise fees that total 58% of the revenue going to the City. They make more money on trash than the haulers do, and those fees can be used to implement new programs in communities.Over time the rate structure is one of the key tools that needs to be recognized.
In some communities they've offered recycling for free, unlimited recycling services for free. In a Zero Waste world that's not a sustainable approach. San Francisco and others have been looking at how to structure rates so that recycling rates are lower than disposal rates, and the key is 25% to 50% lower than disposal rates is what some of the communities are stressing in the way they structure their rates. And that way the cost of providing the recycling services can still be supported through a sustainable rate structure that's paying for the recycling services, but by the structure of the rates it's going to be still saving the generator of the material money compared to if they just throw it away. So that's what I meant that how you set-up the rate structure in a community has a huge impact on getting that price signal into the marketplace and making a sustainable system over the long haul.
Holly Ellmore: This is Holly. I'd like -- can I just clarify quickly, our tipping fees are not funding, it's the difference in the tipping fees between the landfill and the composting facility.
Gary Liss: What's your landfill fee, do you know?
Holly Ellmore: They're around $40, and then this is about -- I'm not privy to exact -- and the - it's around $30. So you've got a 25% savings in tipping fees between going to the landfill versus going to the composting. So that's what really helps with the savings.
Kathy Frevert: And I just wanted to add that with regard to product stewardship, for those products where you would be using a product stewardship system you would have a sustainable financing system as part of the program design.
Gary Liss: And it shifts the costs from local governments to the overall product system, and that's the importance of EPR. So in the long run another key part of the sustainable funding is the EPR, particularly for the more difficult to recycle materials and toxic products that are in the waste stream.
Closing
Saskia van Gendt: We're wrapping up. We have about one more minute, and I just wanted to allow each of the presenters to make one closing statement, final remark of inspiration for the audience. Thank you so much for sharing your remarks. Holly, let's start with you?
Holly Ellmore: I'd just like to stress how I ended, that this is just the beginning. I love the focus on Zero Waste, and I'm excited to see how it's going to extend into all other areas, the chemical cleaners and how we're just living our lives.
Saskia van Gendt: Excellent. Thank you. Kathy?
Kathy Frevert: It's just really exciting to see all the progress we have made. Sometimes we lose sight of that, when you look back and say we haven't heard. Sometimes you get caught in the middle and you don't think a lot is happening, but a lot is and it will continue. And it's an exciting feature for us.
Saskia van Gendt: And, Gary?
Gary Liss: Businesses are leading the way to Zero Waste. Find a Zero Waste business in your area and then work on doing something to move Zero Waste forward. Ask that your community, your business, your church, your college, your home adopt Zero Waste as a goal, and start the ball rolling. Let the local media know about that, and pretty soon you'll see others wanting to join in and be a part of making Zero Waste a reality.
Saskia van Gendt: Wonderful. We wish to thank Mr. Gary Liss, Ms. Kathy Frevert, and Holly Ellmore for taking time from their schedules to share their knowledge and experiences with us. Most of all, we thank each of you for dialing in to this month's RCC Web Academy Program. It is you that the Program is designed for. So please make sure you complete our survey and give us any feedback about how we can meet your needs and interests.
Next month's RCC Web Academy session will be "School Chemical Cleanup," so please sign-up for the Thursday, October 15th RCC Web Academy Program. It'll start at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Thanks a lot.