Comments on EPA's Draft National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organics: Improving Waste-Sector GHG Emissions Accounting
Author
Carol Adaire Jones
Date Released
February 2024

The Environmental Law Institute respectfully submitted the following comments in response to the Environmental Protection Agency’s request for input on the Draft National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organics. These comments focused specifically on the importance of improving the accounting of greenhouse gas emissions from the waste sector.

Comments on EPA's Draft National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organics: Model Ordinances and Other Forms of Capacity-Building
Author
Linda K. Breggin
Date Released
February 2024

The Environmental Law Institute respectfully submitted the following comments in response to the Environmental Protection Agency’s request for input on the Draft National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organics. These comments focused specifically on the value of model ordinances and other forms of capacity building for local and state governments. 

State and City Food Waste Reduction Goals: Context, Best Practices, and Precedents
Author
Carol Adaire Jones
Date Released
January 2024

ELI’s Food Waste Initiative is publishing a Research Brief Series to present takeaways from the Initiative’s research, spanning a range of topics important to food waste prevention, recovery, and recycling. To access other research briefs in the series, visit: https://www.eli.org/food-waste-initiative/publications. State and City Food Waste Reduction Goals: Context, Best Practices, and Precedents reviews the status of food waste reduction goals in the United States.

ELI Report
Author
Nick Collins - Environmental Law Institute
Environmental Law Institute
Current Issue
November-December 2023
Issue
6

Research Paper Filling the gaps in state programs to protect Waters of the United States in a post-Sackett world

The wake of May’s Supreme Court decision in Sackett v. EPA, combined with a rule change issued by the agency in August, has shifted the legal protections afforded to Waters of the United States, known commonly as WOTUS, under the federal Clean Water Act. These actions place a substantial burden on state and tribal regulators and legislators to protect waters within their jurisdiction.

In May, ELI published a research paper titled Filling the Gaps: Strategies for States/Tribes for Protection of Non-WOTUS Waters. The study identifies which states are reliant on the federal agency’s definition for protection of freshwater wetlands and tributaries from dredge and fill, which states have limited coverage for non-WOTUS waters, and which states have comprehensive permitting programs applicable to their waters that may fall outside of federal coverage under the act.

The report goes in depth into states with fairly comprehensive permitting programs applicable to their waters (i.e., wetlands) including those that fall outside the coverage of the federal CWA. These are California, Connecticut, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. This section also makes comparisons between states in this category, demonstrating how the coverage of these programs varies.

The study includes a number of states that have adopted specialized laws and regulations, or in some states case-by-case review practices, that are expressly intended to fill identified gaps in federal CWA coverage. These states provide some regulatory protections for identified classes of non-federal waters, including certain of their nontidal wetlands.

Some states provide regulatory authority and funding to specific activities affecting protected waters. The seven states with limited or gap-filling regulatory coverage are: Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia, and Wyoming, plus the District of Columbia. The report includes a comparative analysis among all of these regulations.

In addition to statewide programs, the report looks at alternative or supplemental approaches that may protect non-WOTUS waters. These approaches include state or local regulations of activities to protect buffer areas adjacent to waters and wetlands; local regulation of wetlands/waters (as authorized by state law or by home rule); regulation of particular activities rather than of specified waters; conservation planning; water quality standards for certain non-WOTUS water; conservation banking with protection for wetlands/waters; voluntary conservation and restoration programs; and hazard mitigation or resilience.

The study also includes an analysis of tribal wetlands programs. The CWA authorizes EPA to treat tribes with reservations as similar to states, allowing these tribes to administer regulatory programs and receive grants under CWA authorities.

Tribes may also develop regulatory programs under tribal law and create non-regulatory programs to protect, manage, and restore wetlands on their lands. More than 40 tribes have submitted independent wetland program plans. Tribal wetland programs, as do state programs, vary widely.

A good deal of investment is needed at the state and local level to ensure that the critical functions provided by wetlands and other waters are not lost.

TSCA conference takes up reducing PFAS in the environment

The Toxic Substances Control Act Annual Conference is hosted by ELI, Bergeson & Campbell, P.C., and the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. Each year, the conference brings together premiere TSCA experts to reflect on challenges and accomplishments since the implementation of the 2016 Lautenberg Amendments.

This year, Lynn Bergeson and Bob Sussman started off the program with broad reflections on the current state of TSCA implementation. Following that, EPA Assistant Administrator Michal Ilana Freedhoff gave a keynote discussion, announcing the EPA Framework for Addressing New PFAS and New Uses of PFAS.

The first panel discussed various aspects of EPA’s risk evaluation of chemical substances. The panelists covered the agency’s potential use of European Union REACH data, EPA’s use of new approach methodologies, the effectiveness of a “whole chemical approach” to risk determinations, and the incorporation of cumulative risk assessment in TSCA risk evaluation.

The second panel discussed EPA’s authority under the Lautenberg Amendments to manage chemical risks. The discussion included how the agency manages workplace risks, enforcement mechanisms for risk management restrictions, whether EPA’s risk management rulemakings are adequately addressing environmental justice concerns, and potential legal challenges to final risk management rules.

This year’s conference featured five former assistant administrators who oversaw EPA’s toxics office.

The third panel discussed new-chemical review under the 2016 revision of TSCA. Panelists covered transparency, processes to guide new-chemical review, new approaches to assess chemical risks, concerns for workers and fenceline communities, and recent trends with EPA’s review of new-chemical substances.

The final panel discussion covered the unique role of TSCA, as compared to other EPA programs, in addressing the issue of PFAS. Experts discussed the agency’s working definition of PFAS, the effectiveness of TSCA implementation in addressing PFAS, whether PFAS should be regulated on a category or chemical-specific basis, and more.

Speakers included Shari Barash, Lynn Bergeson, Madison Calhoun, Jordan Diamond, Maria Doa, Emily Donovan, Alexandra Dapolito Dunn, Richard E. Engler, David Fisher, Michal Ilana Freedhoff, Eve Garnet, Lynn Goldman, Ben Grumbles, Rashmi Joglekar, Jim Jones, Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, Matt Klasen, Pamela Miller, Jeffery Morris, W. Caffey Norman, Steve Owens, Steve Risotto, Daniel Rosenberg, Jennifer Sass, Robert Sussman, Brian Symmes, and Meredith Williams.

ELI members can access a recording of the entire TSCA conference and all associated materials as part of their membership on the ELI website.

Nashville signs order on reducing food waste

A new Model Executive Order on Municipal Leadership on Food Waste Reduction developed by the Environmental Law Institute and Natural Resources Defense Council can help localities reduce the amount of food wasted throughout municipal operations, highlight the importance of reducing food waste, and demonstrate food waste reduction measures that businesses and other entities may voluntarily replicate.

The model was developed as part of ELI’s Food Waste Initiative, which aims to help stakeholders meet U.S. food loss and waste goals by implementing public policies and public-private initiatives to prevent food waste, increase surplus food rescue, and expand scrap recycling.

Up to 40 percent of food in the United States is wasted. Local governments are well-positioned to address the problem. Given the large amount of food that some municipalities procure and the many people that they employ, the impact of food waste reduction measures in municipal operations can be substantial.

The model offers a range of municipal measures to reduce food waste that include staff training and hiring, procurement policies, and employee benefits.

Recently, Nashville adopted a resolution in support of two key measures in the model: a food waste reduction goal and adoption of best food waste reduction practices by municipal departments.

Filling the Gaps in State Programs to Protect WOTUS

States and Localities Aim to Stem Tide of Fast Fashion Textile Waste
Author
Linda K. Breggin - Environmental Law Institute
Environmental Law Institute
Current Issue
November-December 2023
Issue
6
Linda K. Breggin headshot

Last year, Massachusetts became the first state to enact a textiles disposal ban that covers clothing, as well as items such as carpets and towels, all of which must be donated or recycled rather than thrown in the trash. The only exceptions are for contaminated textiles, such as those with mold or insects.

More recently, a California bill would require producers to implement and fund an extended producer responsibility program for recycling and reuse of clothing and other unwanted textiles. The bill gained traction in the most recent legislative session and is expected to be reintroduced in 2024.

Local governments are also in the game. According to a PromoLeaf study of the three largest cities in each state, only eight provide curbside textile collection as part of their recycling programs, but over 75 percent supported some type of initiative aimed at reducing cloth waste.

State and local measures to stem the tide of textile waste serve to advance overarching sustainability goals such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions and conserving natural resources. They also can reduce the volume of municipal solid waste in the face of population growth and tapped out land-fills.

It is no surprise that attention is turning to textiles. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that textiles accounted for 17 million tons, or 5.8 percent, of all municipal solid waste generated in 2018—clothing and footwear constituted the largest component. The textile recycling rate was only 14.7 percent.

According to the Council for Textile Recycling, the average U.S. citizen tosses 70 pounds of textiles per year, a 55 percent increase since 2000. This increase is commonly attributed to the “fast fashion” industry. As McKinsey explains, compressed production cycles and low prices allow consumers to frequently augment their wardrobes. As a result, the number of garments purchased per person increased 60 percent between 2000 and 2014, and “across nearly every apparel category, consumers keep clothing items about half as long as they did 15 years ago.”

Levi Strauss’s publicly released life cycle analysis of its signature 501 jeans reveals the environmental impacts. The carbon emissions associated with one pair of jeans equates to 69 miles driven by the average American car; the water usage alone equates to one household’s total water needs for three days.

On the upside, Massachusetts contends that in its state 85 percent of textiles currently sent to land-fills could be donated, reused, or recycled—estimating that 45 percent is usable clothing, 20 percent is fiber conversion grade, and 30 percent is wiping cloth grade. For example, a stained tee shirt may have a “second life” as a wiping cloth while a sock can be used for pillow stuffing.

The success of textile landfill diversion efforts, however, largely depends on viable donation, re-use, and recycling alternatives. Massachusetts emphasizes the central role of its “extensive collection infrastructure of both non-profit and for-profit textile recovery organizations” and provides a drop-off location directory searchable by material type. It also lists manufacturer and retailer take-back programs that accept items for recycling, including, in some cases, products they don’t even sell.

In addition, the rapidly growing market for second-hand (or “new to me”) clothing is providing a disposal alternative. Dedicated platforms such as Poshmark, in addition to established retailers such as Lululemon, are participating in this form of “re-commerce.” Statista predicts the global market value of resale apparel will almost double from 2022 to 2027—fueled in part by Generation Z and Millennials opting for less expensive, more environmentally sound clothing purchases.

The recycling market is also developing—but it’s a work in progress. The Textile Exchange explains that textile-to-textile recycling has considerable potential but “on the ground the processes needed to make it happen are extremely complex.” It cites, for example, the challenges associated with collection and sorting infrastructure. Other challenges include fostering technologies that achieve clean material feeds—no easy feat given the amount of clothing composed of blended fibers—and addressing the energy use and pollution from recycling processes.

Taking note of recent state developments, the American Circular Textiles Group recently urged EPA to consider federal legislation on extended producer responsibility that would “harmonize state laws with clear textile collection targets and carve out funds for textile reuse and recycling logistics, infrastructure, and innovation” as part of its national strategy on plastics pollution—including microfiber pollution from polyester and the other plastics that make up 60 percent of the materials used in clothing production.

The federal government may eventually regulate textile waste—but for now states are leading the way.

States and Localities Aim to Stem Tide of Fast Fashion Textile Waste

ELI in Action
Author
Linda K. Breggin - Environmental Law Institute
Environmental Law Institute
Current Issue
May-June 2018
Issue
3
Linda K. Breggin

For several years, ELI has served as the project coordinator for the Nashville Food Waste Initiative, a project of the Natural Resources Defense Council. In this capacity, ELI Senior Research Associate Emmett McKinney and I have worked with NRDC to develop and implement a promising pilot program in Nashville that explores local approaches to addressing food waste.

NRDC’s landmark report “Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food From Farm to Fork to Landfill” documents the shocking amount of food that is thrown away — and that almost all of it is landfilled or incinerated. From an environmental, social justice, and flat-out cost perspective, however, it is far preferable to prevent wasted food, rescue surplus food, and recycle food scraps — in that order.

Consequently, NFWI has worked in partnership with the metro government of Nashville and encompassing Davidson County and a wide range of stakeholders on a holistic strategy that fosters these alternatives to landfilling and incinerating. Most recently, NFWI has focused, in particular, on the rescue of prepared foods.

The catalyst for these efforts, in part, was an analysis by NRDC exploring the potential to expand food rescue from consumer-facing businesses, such as restaurants, retail grocers, and caterers located in Nashville and other cities. Its 2017 report “Modeling the Potential to Increase Food Rescue: Denver, New York City and Nashville” found that an additional 2.3 million meals potentially could be rescued each year from restaurants, hotels, and caterers in Nashville alone — mostly in the form of prepared foods. Furthermore, these potential meals represent 23 percent of the 9.3 million meals needed to feed the food insecure in the city.

To further assess the landscape for prepared food rescue and identify barriers to rolling out a program nationwide, NRDC and ELI conducted a series of interviews and surveys with local “last mile” organizations — nonprofits that address food insecurity — and potential donors, such as restaurants.

The study, “Nashville Food Rescue Landscape Analysis,” concluded that a substantial portion of the nonprofits could increase the number of meals they served, but several barriers limited donations and the ability to accept them. These impediments included staffing, storage, and funding constraints, as well as concerns about liability and lack of knowledge about federal tax incentives.

Furthermore, a threshold barrier for potential donors was the need for more information about nonprofits that could receive donated food and handle it safely. To address this barrier, NFWI launched an effort to introduce some of the largest potential donors to recipient organizations. This multi-step process has included soliciting more detailed information from hunger and poverty nonprofits about their needs and reaching out to large potential donors.

As part of the effort to encourage potential donors, NFWI partnered with the National Restaurant Association’s local chapter and the independent restaurant association Nashville Originals on a workshop for their members about the tax benefits of and liability protections for surplus food donations. The workshop also introduced potential donors to organizations that facilitate donations, such as the Food Donation Connection, which is a nonprofit that manages businesses’ food donation programs with its communication, reporting, and monitoring networks, and One Generation Away, a local organization that picks up surplus food and delivers it to nonprofits.

To date, NFWI has successfully facilitated donations from about 11 businesses, including Ascend Amphitheater, several Hilton hotels, and Bridgestone Arena — in some cases matching them with Food Donation Connection or One Generation Away, which in turn will ensure that a wide range of local nonprofits benefit from the donations.

Typically, matchmaking is as simple as setting up a conference call to kick off the partnership. In other cases, potential donors want to talk first with other businesses that have donated food to learn more or tour the recipient organization before they donate.

Future efforts to encourage surplus prepared food donations include the relaunch of the 2017 Mayor’s Food Saver Challenge for Restaurants, in which over 50 restaurants participated by adopting measures to address food waste. For example, Country Music Hall of Fame has donated 1,000 trays of food — each serving 20-40 people — since joining the Challenge, compared to none the year before.

The relaunch is anticipated to include not only restaurants but the entire hospitality industry in the region and may involve regular reporting and adoption of measures, including surplus food donation, on an ongoing basis.

Feeding the hungry with wasted food.

National, State Policies Drive Circular Economy
Author
Mathy Stanislaus - World Resources Institute
World Resources Institute
Current Issue
January-February 2018
Issue
1
Parent Article
The Circular Economy in Action

First, a quick primer of why a circular economy approach matters: the extraction of raw materials grew from 22 billion tons per year in 1970 to 70 billion tons per year in 2010. If this trend continues, raw materials could be required to increase by as much as three times by 2050.

At the same time, over half of the yearly material inputs into industrial economies become waste within a year, with a $4.5 trillion annual loss of value by 2030. Moreover, recent studies have concluded that a circular economy approach could reduce the gap of achieving the Paris Agreement by 50 percent.

While the economic and environmental promise of a circular economic approach has been getting some traction in the United States, what are realistic near term policies to accelerate such a transition? The U.S. Business Council for Sustainable Development is working with Ohio, Tennessee, Michigan, and Minnesota to advance secondary materials transactions.

However, the definition and interpretation of whether an interstate transfer of secondary materials is considered a transfer of feedstock for manufacturing or for waste management has become a barrier to secondary materials utilization. For example, Ohio’s regulations differ from adjacent states. One immediate activity is to harmonize the definitions among adjacent states to foster secondary materials markets, with the necessary transparency requirements.

A regulation adopted by EPA in 2014, the Definition of Solid Waste Rule, is intended to incentivize the utilization of secondary materials in manufacturing while protecting against mismanagement in the recycling system. The rule removes certain materials from being designated as a hazardous waste to foster reuse back into the manufacturing production process from which it was generated (e.g., closed-loop recycling) and remanufacturing of chemical solvents. Separately, the rule also clarified that the recycling of metals is for the purpose of producing valuable products.

The rule is projected to save as much as $59 million per year. The remanufacturing of solvents alone is projected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 344,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year. Having states adopt this rule, and expanding the number of materials covered under this rule, would accelerate the reuse of secondary materials in manufacturing, save money, and further reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

More than 20 states now have “extended producer responsibility” laws for e-waste in an effort to shift some of the end-of-life burden of electronics to the manufacturers. However, the EPR systems have not resulted in the recovery of high quality metals and minerals as feedstock for remanufacturing into electronics products. Currently, while a ton of mobile phones contains about 200 to 300 grams of gold, only 10–15 percent is recycled.

Investment in technology and automation in recycling infrastructure to recover high quality metals and minerals is not occurring with the absence of economies of scale cited as a factor. Moreover, EPR’s cost allocation system has not acted as an incentive for manufacturers to change design. China’s version of EPR has a target of 20 percent recycled content in products including electronics by 2025. Accomplishing this target will require higher quality systems for recovery of metals and minerals from electronics. Could such a target create market drivers to promote investment and innovation for higher quality recovery in the United States?

Tax incentives can drive action. In December 2015, Congress passed into law a permanent charitable giving tax incentive for donating food and extended it to pass-through entities. The tax credit has been cited by food manufacturers as a critical factor to overcome concerns regarding the cost of food donation and liability risks. It has resulted in a substantial increase in food diverted from waste.

Sweden has introduced tax breaks and other fiscal incentives to promote maintenance and repair of durable consumer goods, and as such encourage extending the lifespan of products. A targeted tax incentive tied to a level of product’s recycled content could drive design and investment.

One last and potential far reaching opportunity is carbon pricing. As state-based carbon systems develop, such as California’s pending carbon market system, credit for use of secondary materials (e.g., products using recycled steel avoid approximately 75 percent of CO2 emissions as compared with using steel produced from virgin ore) would assist in financing secondary materials recovery systems and as incentive for product design.

Establishing a public-private process to prioritize policy actions and to establish an implementation strategy would tangibly advance the promise of a circular economy.

 

Mathy Stanislaus is a senior fellow at World Resources Institute and senior advisor to the World Economic Forum focusing on advanced circular economy policies and strategies globally. He headed EPA’s solid waste office during the Obama administration.

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