The article looks at three states – New Hampshire, Maryland and Oregon – and notes overall that about 12 states reported increases in recovery levels in 2000 while nine indicated a drop. There were 27 states with an increase in the number of recycling collection programmes, although the overall growth level in the number of schemes was small.
In New Hampshire a state government report looked at why a 40% recycling target set 10 years ago had not been reached. Instead New Hampshire has achieved 30%. Among 26 recommendations are for councils to boost their efforts and to increase the use of volume-based waste collection rates. The report also advocates that the state government set up a loan scheme for local recycling projects.
In Maryland a figure of 38% recycling is up by 2% on 1999. But, this has been achieved by including waste minimisation work such as home composting – the latter cannot be included in UK figures.
In Oregon the rate rose to 38.9% in 2000, but this includes construction waste, which is a grey area for UK recyclers in terms of whether it should be counted as a recycling target component. Scrap metal figures are also included in the data for Oregon.
Resource Recycling has a website at resource-recycling.com
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