Environmental Benefits Calculator Now Includes More Materials
Whether in front of the town board of selectman, the city council or the state legislature, increasingly recycling professionals are being asked to justify and defend public investments in recycling.
NRC’s Environmental Benefits Calculator is a powerful tool that members can use to make a compelling case for the significant environmental benefits of recycling.
With generous assistance of the U.S. EPA and ICF Consulting, NRC expanded the power of the
Environmental Benefits Calculator to compute environmental benefits from recycling carpets, personal computers, clay brick, aggregate and fly ash. In addition, the calculator has been updated with the most recent data from the U.S. EPA on energy savings and greenhouse gas reductions resulting from recycling.
Significant energy and natural resources are used to make products and packaging. When we recycle these materials, we keep the energy and resources embodied in those products working for us, rather than wasting them after just one use by burying them in landfills. While the savings vary from material to material, nearly all recycling processes produce significant energy savings over manufacturing with virgin materials. Inputting EPA’s national data for recycling into the calculator demonstrates recycling's substantial contribution to resource conservation in this country.
Since the first version was released in December 2001, the calculator has proven an invaluable tool for numerous recycling program managers and advocates. NRC members have used the tool to demonstrate recycling’s benefits to the public and decisionmakers in their locales. Following are just a few examples.
• The Recycling Association of Minnesota has used the calculator to prepare recycling benefit fact sheets for use in testimony before the state legislature, outreach to the public, and America Recycles Day campaigns.
• Several college campus recycling programs have used the calculator to demonstrate to the student body the global impacts of their local recycling efforts. Using data on the quantity of recyclables collected on campus, Peninsula Sanitary Service/Stanford University Recycling, applied the calculator to estimate the environmental benefits of Stanford’s campus recycling efforts.
• Local recycling centers have also used the calculator to highlight the environmental benefits of drop-off programs. Summit County Colorado used results from the calculator to show that individual action supports collective change.
You can use the
Environmental Benefits Calculator to determine how much your program is doing to improve the environment. Simply enter data on the amount of materials recycled and the model will determine environmental benefits for four key areas:
• Energy savings
• Reduction in greenhouse gas emissions
• Reduction in emissions of air and water pollutants
• Conservation of natural resources