The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report on Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) (EPA, 2018) shows that the amount of MSW generated by Americans increased from 88.1 million tons in 1960 to 262.4 million tons in 2015. Out of the 262.4 million tons, 137.7 million was the estimated amount disposed into landfills. Only 67.8 million tons or about 26% of the total waste generated was recycled. It is clear from the numbers above that the success of existing recycling programs is limited. Increasing populations will continue to put pressure on our existing resources, compelling governments at all levels to take additional action to increase recycling efforts to transition from a linear model of make, use, and dispose to a closed-loop circular economy system, emphasizing reduce, reuse and recycle.
Within this context, my research evaluates recycling programs in the state of North Carolina, using counties as the unit of analysis. The first part explores county level factors that affect recycling rates. Factors span across the economic, demographic, social, geographic, technical, and programmatic aspects of recycling programs. The second part of my study focusses on exploring the economic and environmental merits of recycling. Specifically, this section explores the GHG emissions and wage creation from recycling certain materials as compared to landfilling them, and the causal mechanism between recycling, and GHG emissions and employment generation. Qualitative interviews with stakeholders in the recycling community inform the findings of my quantitative analysis.
I found that recycling is moving away from being a behavior based in individual taste and preferences to a mainstream behavior—part of everyday life. We must view recycling not only as an individual altruistic action but also as a means to decrease the cost of goods, lower landfill costs, combat climate change, and reduce resource and energy use while engaging the community. Most important is the need for standardized measures for recycling, new ways to measure recycling performance, and greater consistency in solid waste management policies so that scholars and program analysts can conduct more comparative studies. My study provides a unique, yet comprehensive look at recycling in the state of North Carolina, and provides recommendations to decision-makers, leaders, and scholars on how to improve existing recycling programs to achieve the goals of environmental and economic sustainability.