Renew America Success Stories

Materials Reuse and Recycling Program

Description

The Materials Reuse and Recycling program, part of the Center for Neighborhood Technology's Campaign for Sustainable Chicago, works to enable Chicago to shift from waste generation and disposal to policies and strategies that promote conservation and recycling of materials.

A key component of the Center's Materials Reuse and Recycling program is to ensure that the environmental and economic benefits of the program accrue to the local, lower-income communities where recycling facilities are most likely to appear. The program works to shape federal policy to expand opportunities at the grass roots level, and it works locally to demonstrate that materials conservation can be an effective engine of equitable economic growth.

While the Center has been engaged in broad recycling and reuse initiatives for quite a while, during the past two years the Center has refocused its recycling efforts on industrial recycling and has done so within the context of a "materials conservation" ethic. The program works to capture the numerous environmental benefits that stem from dramatically increasing the proportion of reprocessed materials serving as the "raw" inputs to Chicago's factories: decreased energy use, decreased landfill use (with resulting protection of groundwater), and the realization of indirect protection of wilderness areas that otherwise would have been damaged by extractive industries.

In addition to the environmental benefits, the Center works to demonstrate that recycling offers economic advantages as well. Recycling creates more jobs than conventional waste disposal methods. Reuse and recycling operations are often labor-intensive and can be a source of entry- and skilled-level positions. Additional jobs can be created locally by attracting industries that will turn recovered materials into finished products. Essentially, recycling is economic development. By capturing the value of material that was once thrown away, recycling can cycle money and jobs back into any community creating neighborhood wealth and opportunity, even in the poorest communities.

Program Highlights

Alliance for a Sustainable Materials Economy

• The Center co-convened and chairs this alliance of recycling and environmental organizations that is seeking to promote materials conservation as an engine of economic growth to the Federal government.
• The Alliance is pushing for the abolition of tax and other preferences for the extraction of raw materials to make recycling and reuse industries more competitive.

• The Center is helping major industrial firms such as Amoco, LTV Steel and Inland Steel work with community development and recycling groups in Northwest Indiana to promote joint recycling projects at the firms' respective plants.

• The Center is convening a working group that is developing a comprehensive regional economic development plan that features pollution prevention, materials recovery, environmental restoration, and the reuse of contaminated industrial sites.

• Center researchers are working to identify market niches for recyclable materials (e.g., slag, mixed residential paper, tires, wood) and to push for legislative and regulatory remedies that will encourage these niches to develop.
• As a result of the Center's work, rubberized asphalt from recycled tires is identified as an appropriate technology in the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1990.
• The Center is working to bring a rubberized asphalt plant to Chicago.

• Working with the U.S. Bureau of Mines to develop a pilot analysis of the Great Lakes region, the Center continues to focus on the flow of materials in the Calumet Region to identify recycling opportunities that will stimulate materials savings and new jobs.

Vital Statistics

Program Management/Partnerships: The Materials Reuse and Recycling program is part of the Center for Neighborhood Technology's Campaign for Sustainable Chicago, and is managed by the Center for Neighborhood Technology.

Budget: The latest figures are available by contacting the program.

Community Served: The entire metropolitan area of Chicago, and particularly lower-income communities that house recycling facilities.

Measures of Success:

Publication of "Beyond Recycling: Material Reuse and Reprocessing in Chicago's Economy," a primer on the flow of metals, tires, plastics and construction waste and demolition debris in the Chicago metropolitan region and their potential for reuse.

Publication of "No Time to Waste: How Communities Can Reap Economic Benefits from the Shift to Recycling."

The creation of the Alliance for a Sustainable Materials Economy.

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