NEWS: Recyclers Global Warming Council Formed

[Gary Liss <gary@garyliss.com>]

Recyclers Global Warming Council Formed

For
More Info:

John Davis, 909-797-7717

(SACRAMENTO) The California Resource Recovery Association Board formed the new Recyclers Global Warming Council, to spearhead the organization?s greenhouse gas reduction efforts.  This Council is charged to work with other organizations wanting to form a coalition addressing the role reducing, reusing, recycling and composting discarded materials can play in reducing greenhouse gases. 

The Recyclers Global Warming Council grew from CRRA?s March 19, 2007 workshop ?Reducing Greenhouse Gases by Composting Organics?. That Sacramento workshop brought together a new coalition to inform the state's climate change policy makers of the major role that composting can play in reducing green house gas emissions.

Approximately 100 representatives of composting and recycling businesses and organizations were convened by the California Resource Recovery Association (CRRA) to develop a common position to present to decision makers.

The groups defined five key issues:
1. Composting to date has received insufficient attention for its importance to reducing the waste industry's responsibility for greenhouse gases. Increasing composting diverts the decomposable part of our discards from landfills where it rots in oxygen-starved conditions that create the methane emissions of concern. 
2.  Landfill operators claim that it captures most of the methane, but the little information that is available does not support those claims. 
3.  California's singular practice of allowing the use of cheap compostable yard trimmings as an alternative daily landfill cover (or ADC) to qualify for recycling credits is crippling the state's compost industry and must be ended.
4.  More work needs to be done to facilitate siting of composting facilities, including educating planners, city councils, and ratepayers on local land-use issues and permitting, streamlining Air District and Water Board permitting, and allowing farmers to compost.
5.  State and local policies needs to be developed that encourage highest and best use of organic material, composting, and purchase of finished compost.    

CRRA has set up a discussion group for anyone who is interested in these issues at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OrganicsOutOfLandfills/

For more information about the Recyclers Global Warming Council, contact John Davis at 909-797-7717 or modemo@earthlink.net.  For more information about CRRA?s Policy Committee, contact Rick Anthony, CRRA Policy Committee Chair, 858-272-2905 or ricanthony@aol.com. For more information about CRRA, contact Julie Muir, CRRA President, 651-321-4261 or juliem@pssi.stanford.edu .

Gary Liss       
916-652-7850    
Fax: 916-652-0485
www.garyliss.com