Mar 26 - Much Work Ahead to Meet 75% Recycling Goal

A new report by CalRecycle shows that California’s recycling rate has plateaued at around 50 percent since 2010. While this is among the highest rates in the country, there is still much work to be done to reach the goal of 75 percent recycling by 2020 set forth by AB 341 (Chesbro), a bill sponsored by Californians Against Waste.

"The key here is both creating an incentive for various materials to be collected for recycling and then creating a further incentive for the remanufacturing of the materials that are collected," CalRecycle Communications Director Mark Oldfield told Resource Recycling.

Among the bills CAW is sponsoring in the 2015-16 session of the California legislature that would make progress in areas key to achieving the 75 percent goal are:

AB 199, authored by Assemblymember Susan Eggman (D-Stockton), would provide a sales and use tax exemption on recycling equipment as well as manufacturing equipment that uses recycled material. With new equipment to process recyclable material into new, marketable projects, California businesses would be able to increase the demand for recyclable material. This bill received bipartisan support in the Assembly Natural Resources Committee on March 24, 2015.

SB 732, authored by Senator Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), would help increase the amount of recycled content in beverage containers sold in California. The bill ties the subsidy beverage companies receive for recycling their used containers to their compliance with a minimum state standard for recycled content.