The Transition from Waste Management to

Resource Management in North America

John H. Skinner. Solid Waste Association of North America

CONTACT

Name: John H. Skinner

E-mail: jskinner@swana.org

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Solid waste managers in North America are making a transition from waste disposal to comprehensive
resource management. This means that managers now recognize their role as suppliers of raw material
and energy resources rather than simply disposers of discarded wastes.

Resource management starts by realizing that our discarded products are in fact potential material and
energy resources that can be harnessed and put to use. Forty states and provinces in the U.S. and Cana-
da have adopted various types of product stewardship or extended producer responsibility laws. These
laws focus on computers, consumer electronics, mercury containing products, carpets, paints, batteries,
beverage containers, pharmaceuticals, packaging and printed materials. Product stewardship and ex-
tended producer responsibility involve a fundamental shift from waste management that is government
financed and ratepayer funded, to resource management where producers take responsibility for the
recovering the resources inherent in discarded products.

Companies in North America understand that waste generation represents an economic inefficiency and
that by reducing wastes they can lower costs and make better use of economic resources. Many enter-
prises are setting zero waste goals and developing programs to significantly reduce and recover the
wastes generated at their facilities.

Resource management also involves recovering the energy resources that are contained in waste dis-
cards. There are currently 86 waste-to-energy facilities in the U.S. representing over $14 billion in as-
sets. There are also a number of new facilities under development and several existing facilities have
expanded their capacity considerably. Resource management should strive to derive the highest re-
source value from waste materials. A number of communities are evaluating conversion technologies,
such as gasification and pyrolysis that attempt to recover various high value fuels and chemical feed
stocks.

A resource management perspective also recognizes that there are resources that can be recovered from
waste materials even after they have been disposed. The methane gas generated from the decomposi-
tion of organic materials in landfills represents an excellent opportunity to capture and use a significant
energy resource. Currently, there are over 550 operational landfill gas to energy projects in the U.S.
which produce of electricity and renewable fuels, but there is potential for nearly twice as many. Land-
fill methane recovery should be facilitated and encouraged as part of any resource management strate-
gy.
All across North America material recycling and energy recovery facilities are becoming integral com-
ponents of comprehensive resource management strategies while continuing to provide needed waste
disposal services.

INTRODUCTION

One of the biggest opportunities facing the waste management industry today is to make a transition
from a traditional waste disposal oriented industry to a comprehensive resource management industry.
This will require solid waste managers to think of themselves as suppliers of raw material and energy
resources rather than managers or disposers of discarded wastes. Their goal should be to produce high
quality and reliable supplies of recycled materials and recovered energy that meets their customers’
requirements at prices that are competitive with other material and energy supplies.

The transition to resource management will require progress with respect to four goals: (1) conserving
resources by reducing the generation of solid waste, (2) increasing the recovery of materials and energy
from waste discards, (3) diverting significant quantities of wastes from landfills to resource recovery
facilities, and (4) disposing of residuals in a manner that protects human health and the environment
over the long term. This will be quite an ambitious task since in the United States in 2010, 227 million
metric tons of municipal solid waste were generated, which amounts to 2 kg per person per day, one of
the highest generation rates in the world (EPA 2011). About 54 percent of this solid waste was
disposed in landfills, 34 percent was recycled (including composting) and 12 percent was combusted
and recovered as energy.

However, there are a number of indications that that the transition to resource management is actually
underway. These include:

1. Product stewardship and extended producer responsibility programs that recognize that
discarded products are in fact potential material and energy resources,
2. Zero Waste programs that understand that waste generation represents an economic inefficiency
that can be eliminated,
3. Expanded recycling and composting to recover material resources from discarded wastes,
4. Waste-to-Energy facilities that recover renewable energy form solid waste,
5. Conversion Technologies such as gasification and pyrolysis that have the potential to derive the
highest resource value from waste materials,
6. Landfill gas recovery systems that recover resources even after wastes have been disposed of,
and
7. Programs that incorporate resource recovery as integral parts of material resource- renewable
energy strategies.

The remainder of this paper will describe how solid waste managers across North America are shifting
the paradigm from a disposal perspective to a sustainable resource management perspective.

WASTE REDUCTION, RECYCLING AND PRODUCT STEWARDSHIP

Seventy seven million metric tons of municipal solid wastes were recycled in 2010 (EPA 2011). This
includes 59 million metric tons that were recycled as materials (paper, metals, glass, plastics etc.) and
18 million metric tons or organic wastes (food wastes and yard trimmings) that were composted. The
national average recycling rate (including composting) was 34 percent.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that the recycling rate for some products is
much higher than the national average. For example products that have recycling rates above 50 per-
cent include: lead batteries (96 percent), news and office papers (72 percent), steel cans (67 percent),
yard trimmings (57 percent) and aluminum cans (50 percent). There are nearly 12,000 programs for
curbside collection of recyclables in the U.S. and 3,500 programs that collect yard trimmings for com-
posting (Green Living 2011). There are also about 1,300 materials recovery facilities (MRFs) and 290
facilities that compost yard trimmings and food wastes from municipal sources (Waste Business Jour-
nal 2011).

Product Stewardship and Extended Producer Responsibility Programs

Resource management starts by recognizing that our discarded products are in fact potential material
and energy resources that can be harnessed and put to use. In order to do this most efficiently, products
need to be designed from the outset to produce less waste and to facilitate resource recovery and recy-
cling. This can be accomplished through product stewardship and extended producer responsibility
efforts where producers take responsibility for a product throughout its entire life cycle, including re-
sponsibility for seeing that the product is recycled or recovered at the end of its useful life. Three
prominent organizations, the Product Stewardship Institute, the Product Policy Institute and the Cali-
fornia Product Stewardship Council, have recently agreed on a single set of definitions of product
stewardship and extended responsibility as follows (Product Stewardship 2012).

Product Stewardship is the act of minimizing health, safety, environmental and social impacts, and
maximizing economic benefits of a product and its packaging throughout all lifecycle stages. The pro-
ducer of the product has the greatest ability to minimize adverse impacts, but other stakeholders, such
as suppliers, retailers, and consumers, also play a role. Stewardship can be either voluntary or required
by law. Extended Producer Responsibility is a mandatory type of product stewardship that includes, at
a minimum, the requirement that the producer’s responsibility for their product extends to post-
consumer management of that product and its packaging.

Extended producer responsibility involves a fundamental shift from waste management that is govern-
ment financed and ratepayer funded, to resource management where producers are being called on to
take responsibility for recovering the resources inherent in discarded products. In addition, most prod-
uct stewardship programs recognize that all participants in a product life cycle including retailers, con-
sumers and waste managers have a responsibility along with along with product designers and manu-
facturers to develop more workable and cost-effective solutions.

Forty states and provinces in the U.S. and Canada actually have adopted various types of product stew-
ardship laws (Product Stewardship Institute 2011). Originally these laws focused on computers, con-
sumer electronics and mercury containing products, but are now being expanded to cover a wider array
of products including carpets, paints, batteries, beverage containers, pharmaceuticals and even packag-
ing and printed materials. The goals of such programs are to create incentives for improved product
designs, and to establish producer supported collection and take-back programs to ensure that such
products are, in fact, recycled.

Zero Waste Programs

Resource management also requires companies to understand that waste generation represents an eco-
nomic inefficiency in the production process and that by reducing wastes they can lower costs and
make better use of economic resources. This understanding is growing in North America and more and
more enterprises are setting zero waste goals and developing programs to significantly reduce and re-
cover the wastes generated in their facilities. Zero waste is a commitment to maximizing waste reduc-
tion, minimizing waste disposal and maximizing downstream resource recovery through recycling and
composting.

Companies can work with their suppliers to reduce wastes through reusable and recyclable transport
packaging; they can train their employees to separate recyclable and compostable materials and can
establish business relationships with recycling markets for the sale of those materials. These activities
can significantly reduce the amounts of materials destined for disposal and the number of companies
that are pursuing this is encouraging and includes well-known names including Xerox, Toyota,
Pillsbury, Anheuser-Busch and Apple (Liss 2012).

Many communities across North America are setting zero waste goals and developing plans to achieve
them. As defined by the Zero Waste International Alliance: "Zero Waste is a goal that is ethical, eco-
nomical, efficient and visionary, to guide people in changing their lifestyles and practices to emulate
sustainable natural cycles, where all discarded materials are designed to become resources for others
to use. Zero Waste means designing and managing products and processes to systematically avoid and
eliminate the volume and toxicity of waste and materials, conserve and recover all resources, and not
burn or bury them. Implementing Zero Waste will eliminate all discharges to land, water or air that are
a threat to planetary, human, animal or plant health” (ZWIA 2004). One example is the city of Aus-
tin, TX that has plans to increase their landfill diversion rate to 75 percent by 2020 and 90 percent by
2040 through an ambitious effort involving materials management, expanded recycling, organics com-
posting and economic development (Gedert 2012).

ENERGY RECOVERY AND CONVERSION TECHNOLOGIES

In 2010, 86 waste-to-energy plants operated in 24 states in the U.S. and have capacity to process more
than 90,000 metric tons of municipal solid waste per day (ERC 2010). Waste-to-energy refers to the
controlled combustion of solid waste in modern furnaces, with state-of-the art pollution controls, with
recovery of the energy in the form of electricity or steam. According to the latest figures from U.S.
EPA, 26 million metric tons of MSW were processed by waste-to-energy facilities in 2010, which rep-
resents 12 percent of the MSW generated in that year.

Waste-to-energy facilities in the U.S. have the capacity to generate the energy equivalent of 2,790
megawatt hours of electricity (ERC 2010). Waste-to-energy facilities provide base load power and
most plants operate in excess of 90 percent of capacity. Waste-to-energy facilities are an integral com-
ponent of comprehensive, integrated solid waste management programs and generate clean, renewable,
energy in addition to providing essential waste disposal services.

Environmental Benefits of Generating Energy from Waste

Capital improvements at waste-to-energy facilities, resulting from the U.S. Clean Air Act regulations,
now ensure that waste-to-energy is one of the cleanest sources of power available. As reported by U.S.
EPA (EPA 2003), waste-to-energy plants are a clean, reliable, renewable source of energy that produce
electricity with less environmental impact than almost any other source of electricity. Also, in accord-
ance with the federal law, waste-to-energy ash must be tested for toxicity. Years of testing ash from
waste-to-energy facilities across the country has proven that the ash is not toxic and is safe for disposal.
Based on all of these significant environmental improvements, policy makers can feel confident in en-
couraging the use of waste-to-energy as a clean renewable source of energy.

Waste-to-energy offers significant potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Waste-to-energy
eliminates landfill methane emissions by diverting wastes from landfills. It also creates a renewable
source of energy that substitutes for the energy produced from the burning of fossil fuels. In another
report, EPA in accord with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change guidelines (EPA 2006,
IPCC 2007) has determined that the carbon dioxide produced from the combustion of biomass solid
wastes (such as waste paper, wood and yard wastes) is considered a biogenic greenhouse gas. The car-
bon dioxide produced from combusting the non-biomass components solid waste (such as plastic and
synthetic rubber derived from petroleum) is an anthropogenic greenhouse gas. Combustion of solid
waste with energy recovery and electricity generation in a waste-to-energy facility also displaces elec-
tricity that would otherwise have been produced by an electric utility power plant. This avoids the pro-
duction of greenhouse gas emissions at fossil fuel powered electric utilities.

Most waste-to-energy facilities recover and recycle ferrous metals and some recover and recycle non-
ferrous metals and glass as well. Therefore, in evaluating the greenhouse gas implications of such fa-
cilities one must account for the reduced energy consumption and reduced emissions of recycling. Life
cycle studies have shown that WTE reduces one metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalents for every
metric ton of solid waste it processes (Thorneloe et al. 2006).

There is renewed interest in waste-to-energy in North America. A number of existing facilities are
expanding their capacity and a several new facilities are being planned. Fifteen states in the U.S. de-
fine waste-to-energy as renewable power and the Federal Energy Policy Act of 2005 defined waste-to-
energy as renewable energy and provided tax incentives for new units.

Waste Conversion Technologies

A resource management approach would also strive to derive the highest resource value from waste
materials. Some of the newer conversion technologies attempt to transform wastes into various high
value fuels and chemical feed stocks, which could result in significantly higher revenues than the elec-
tricity or steam produced by conventional waste-to-energy plants (SWANA 2011). These technologies
include gasification, pyrolysis, plasma arc, hydrolysis and anaerobic digestion. While many of these
new technologies are still at the research or pilot plant stage, several of them are being constructed at
the larger demonstration scale level. There is considerable interest in conversion technologies, with
planning and feasibility studies being conducted in dozens of communities. These are important devel-
opments that should be closely monitored because, if successful, they could significantly improve the
economics of resource recovery.

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AT LANDFILLS

A resource management strategy involves reducing the amount of waste going to landfills and increas-
ing recycling and recovery. In the U.S. the amount of waste actually disposed of by landfill declined
over that past two decades from 132 million metric tons in 1990 to 120 million metric tons in 20109
(EPA 2011). That means that even though waste generation has increased, the amount landfill disposal
has decreased. The number of landfills has decreased as well from over 8,000 in 1990 to less than
1,900 in 2010.

Resource management at landfills includes utilization of landfill gas as a renewable energy source and
bioreactor operations to extend landfill life and reduce post closure care requirements.

Landfill Gas as a Renewable Energy Source

Methane emissions from landfills represent an excellent opportunity to capture and use a significant
energy resource. The capture of methane from landfills eliminates the release of this greenhouse gas
and its combustion produces carbon dioxide that is biogenic. The subsequent use of the methane as a
renewable fuel offsets the greenhouse gas emissions that would have been produced from burning non-
renewable fossil fuels.

Landfill methane can be collected in high efficiency gas collection systems. The methane can then be
destroyed by combusting the collected gas in a flare, using it as a fuel in engines or furnaces, using it as
a vehicle fuel or injecting it into a natural gas pipeline. Landfill gas combusted in an engine-generator
set can produce electricity. Landfill gas is a renewable energy source and has been recognized as such
in federal, state and provincial legislation throughout the U.S. and Canada. In 2005 the US Congress
enacted the Energy Policy Act which provided a federal tax credit for the production of electricity from
landfill gas. Under this legislation, landfill gas has been classified as a renewable fuel and is eligible
for financial incentives similar to other renewable fuels such as wind, solar, geothermal and biomass.

Currently, there are 551 operational landfill gas to energy projects in the U.S. which create 1,697 meg-
awatts of electricity and produce 309 million standard cubic feet per day of renewable fuel (LMOP
2011). However, there are many more landfills in the U.S. that have the potential to capture and utilize
landfill gas. EPA has identified 510 candidate landfills that have the potential for landfill gas to energy
projects, representing 1,165 megawatts of electricity.

Bioreactor Landfills
One promising landfill method that has been developed over the last 20 years is the bioreactor landfill
(SWANA 2009). A bioreactor landfill is a sanitary landfill that uses enhanced microbiological pro-
cesses to increase and accelerate the decomposition and bio-stabilization of solid waste. The goal of a
bioreactor landfill is to significantly increase the extent of organic waste decomposition over what
would otherwise occur within the landfill. Stabilization of the waste means that the environmental per-
formance parameters, such as the landfill gas generation rate and leachate constituent concentrations,
reach low, steady levels and should not increase in the event of any partial containment system failures
following closure of the landfill.

A bioreactor landfill requires certain specific management activities and operational modifications to
enhance microbial decomposition processes. The single most important factor is liquid addition and
management. The bioreactor process requires significant liquid addition to reach and maintain optimal
conditions. While leachate can be re-circulated within the landfill, water or other non-toxic liquids
must also be added, in amounts depending on climatic conditions, to reach moisture levels necessary
for enhanced biodegradation.

Bioreactor landfills offer a number of potential benefits (SWANA 2009). The primary benefit is the
reduction of future potential environmental risks through the bio-stabilization of the wastes. If a signif-
icant portion of the waste is converted to a relatively inert form, future releases of contaminants would
be less likely if the landfill containment system were to be breached. This could also reduce post clo-
sure monitoring, maintenance and remediation costs. Another benefit would be the possibility of re-
capturing and reusing landfill volume due to enhanced waste settlement. Accelerated waste decompo-
sition would accelerate landfill gas production over a shorter time frame, thereby increasing the oppor-
tunity for gas collection and use. Recirculation of leachate during bioreactor operation would provide
for in-situ leachate treatment which could reduce the leachate management costs.

As with any new technology there are potential drawbacks and risks associated with its implementation
(SWANA 2009). Larger and more rapid landfill settlement due to accelerated decomposition could
result in damage to the landfill structures. Addition of liquids and accelerated landfill gas production
could result in the need for larger capacity leachate and gas collection and treatment systems and in-
crease costs. Addition of liquids could increase the potential for leachate seeps which could cause odors
and contaminate storm water management systems. Higher landfill temperatures resulting from biore-
actor operation could create the potential for landfill fires and could have an adverse impact on synthet-
ic liner material. Landfill managers need to understand both the potential benefits and the potential
risks of bioreactor operation and develop a management system that takes advantage of the potential
benefits while controlling and minimizing potential risks.

At this time there are about 30 active bioreactor projects in North America where water or other liquids
are added in addition to leachate recirculation. Many of the projects have been implemented as full-
scale demonstration projects. The purpose of these projects is to demonstrate that the bioreactor land-
filling method can work on a day-to-day basis in commercial landfilling operations. These demonstra-
tion projects are designed to identify and resolve a wide variety of issues such as the degree of biostabi-
lization that can ultimately be achieved in practice. Bioreactor landfill technology is in the full-scale
stage of technology development and commercialization in North America and has been sufficiently
tested both in the laboratory and in pilot projects to warrant the investment in demonstrating its applica-
tion in full-scale, commercially-operating landfills.

Once the focus is expanded to resource management instead of limited to waste management, integra-
tion of resource recovery activities with other renewable energy technologies can open up some inter-
esting new possibilities. Wind turbines can be installed at landfill sites and the energy produced can be
tied into the system recovering electricity from the landfill methane. Solar panels can be installed over
landfill covers or on transfer station roofs and the electricity can be used on site or fed into the electric
grid. A resource management perspective can also lead to some innovative recycling approaches, for
example where closed landfills are mined to recover material and energy resources. What was previ-
ously thought of only as a disposal facility can be transformed into an integrated material resource-
renewable energy complex. Such facilities can become integral components of comprehensive re-
source management strategies while continuing to provide needed waste disposal services.

CONCLUSIONS

A full suite of technologies are available and are being employed in North America to make the transi-
tion from waste management to resource management. In order to reduce waste generation, communi-
ties and companies in the U.S and Canada are instituting product stewardship and zero waste programs
to encourage product design changes that minimize waste, maximize the conservation and recovery of
resources, and minimize residuals going to disposal. Efforts are underway to significantly increase
recycling and enhance the recovery of energy from solid waste. There is also considerable interest in
thermal and chemical conversion technologies that have the potential to convert solid waste into high
value fuels and chemical products. Recognizing that in the near term there will continue to be a need
for landfills; regulatory standards for landfills in North America are among the most stringent in the
world. Recovery and utilization of landfill gas is a wide scale practice and innovative bioreactor land-
fills are being demonstrated at full scale.

Solid waste managers need to be provided with a wide range of options so that they can select what
works best based on their environmental, economic and public policies and priorities. This would allow
market forces to work to increase waste recovery rates in the most economical and efficient manner. Sol-
id waste managers across North America are applying new and improved technologies and practices in
an attempt to bring about sustainable solid waste programs that will preserve and protect the environ-
ment for current and future generations.
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