How many pounds of recyclables does a household generate annually? What is the commodity profile of that material? If you think your city or county knows, the state of North Carolina wants your input.

North Carolina is engaging the recycling community in a quest to understand what it refers to as essential statistics. According to North Carolina recycling officials, with this figure in hand the recycling industry, commodity groups and state and local recycling programs can:

• benchmark the total amount of residential recyclables generated in a given community, state or region;
• gauge the performance of current residential recycling programs against the theoretical recovery maximum;
• ballpark participation rates by community and by commodity;
• understand how much of each commodity is in the residential stream;
• provide critical data for local or state planning and reporting processes; and
• track the performance of newly proposed mixed waste processing plants.

Based on data to date from North Carolina communities; Alachua County, Florida, and Fort Worth, Texas, results show that a typical household generates about 828 pounds of recyclables annually. A broader data set from around the country will help improve the accuracy and validity of this number, North Carolina recycling officials say.

Of this 828 pounds of recyclables, corrugated cardboard comprises 86.7 pounds; newspapers, 103 pounds; residential mixed paper, 233.4 pounds; cartons (aseptic and gable-topped), 3.9 pounds; rigid plastics, 19.4 pounds; PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles, 53.6 pounds; HDPE (high-density polyethylene) bottles, 34.1 pounds; plastic containers Nos. 3-7, 58.2 pounds; glass bottles and jars, 155 pounds; steel cans, 54 pounds; aluminum cans, 23.9 pounds; and aerosol cans, 2.9 pounds.

North Carolina officials are asking interested states to submit the following information:

• waste and recycling data that is as purely residential as possible;
• definitive numbers on households served by both solid waste and recycling collection programs;
• sound data on the total tonnage of recyclables collected from households;
• sound data on the total tonnage of solid waste collected from households;
• a relatively recent residential household waste characterization to determine how much of the disposed solid waste stream is recyclable; and
• while helpful but not necessary, the residential recycling commodity breakdown from a community’s material recovery facility (MRF).

State and local governments willing to share this information are asked to contact Rob Taylor at rob.taylor@ncdenr.gov or Matt James at matt.james@ncdenr.gov of the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Data will be updated and shared as the project continues, says the department.