Agenda - Council - 11/25/1980 - Laserfiche WebLink

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- 44 - The greatest contributors to the Region's disposal problem are, in order of importance, paper (about 33 percent), yard waste (about 19 percent), and food waste (about 17 percent). Noncombustibles, mainly glass and metals, contribute the remaining 20 percent. The existing recycling system is probably recovering about 14 per- cent of the gross discards. Currently, the greatest impact on the net waste stream comes from recycling paper products, which acounts for over 90 percent of the materials recycled. There are very negligible amounts of food and yard waste being recycled. Only a small portion of the glass and metals in the waste stream is being recycled. Based on data shown in Table 4, information contianed in preceding sec- tions, and consultations with government, industry and citizen representa- tives, objectives were proposed for each of the specific materials using five-year target dates. Tables 5 and 6 display the proposed regional objectives for "low-technology" recycling and "high-technology" resource recovery systems, respectively. These objectives are stated in terms of, first, net increase in percent of each material recovery, and second, the net increase in waste stream impact by the year 2000. Both values do not include the current recycling rates, and therefore reflect the additional recovery objectives for the Region for each target year. The reason for stating the estimated 1980 recycling rate is to establish a baseline that counties and the Metropolitan Council can use to quantify results of future abatement efforts. For purposes of these objectives, low-technology systems include all forms of source separation, such as office paper recovery programs, recycling centers, scrap dealers, backyard and centralized composting, and salvaging. High-technology resource recovery systems, on the other hand, include all centralized facilities, such as energy and biological recovery systems, that process mixed waste and employ mechanical separation of -marketable items or shredding equipment. Tables 5 and 6 are designed to complement each other so that the combined objectives for the year 2000 would not add up to more than about 90 percent of each material available, which was assumed to be the maximum degree of abatement achievable. The objectives in this section were calculated in the following manner. First, the present recycling rate was identified for each specific material. Second, a reasonably achievable degree of recovery was esti- mated for the year 2000 for source separation systems. These were based on market conditions for that specific material, general strategy effectiveness, as defined by past experience and current projects around the country, and economic, institutional and political constraints. Third, reasonable projections were made for the years 1985, 1990 and 1995, based on the same considerations as in step two, in addition to estimates