ARLINGTON, VA. - The National Recycling Coalition, best known for its buy-recycled campaign and other efforts to spur recycling, wants to become a stronger advocate for waste reduction. To that end, a special NRC-established committee met Aug. 9 in Arlington and chose three source-reduction projects to work on during the coming year.
Those projects, funded with a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, are aimed at giving state and local policy-makers and businesses better access to information on source reduction.
The coalition will present details on the three projects at next month's NRC congress in Kansas City, Mo.
The first project will identify economic incentives and disincentives to source reduction contained in state and local laws and regulations.
Steering committee memberTom Rattray of Procter & Gamble Co. in Cincinnati said states and localities, concentrating primarily on recycling mandates, often unwittingly discourage waste-reduction efforts.
``Source reduction gets short shrift again and again and again,'' he said.
The second project aims to distribute information on successful local source-reduction programs to local governments nationwide.
The third project concentrates on encouraging reuse and reduction of transport packaging. Specifically, members want to produce a guidebook for local governments and businesses on opportunities for reducing transport packaging.
The EPA provided a $95,000 grant for the source-reduction forum, $40,000 of which has been spent on a members' survey and other preparatory costs.
The remaining money is expected to pay for a year's worth of work, by which time the NRC hopes to have the projects completed. If not, the coalition may go back to the EPA for another grant.