The National Recycling Coalition (NRC), Washington, hosted its inaugural Sustainable Materials Management (SMM) Summit, where it says sustainability leaders from across the country convened to discuss the issues around discards management.

“The NRC is pleased that the summit created this opportunity to discuss the vast challenges and opportunities that face the broad spectrum of sustainable material management professionals,” says Mark Lichtenstein, NRC president and CEO. “The summit is intended to be the starting point for development of a National SMM Action Plan that will catapult recycling and other SMM issues to the next level of support and success at every level,” he adds.

Nearly 140 people representing government, businesses and organizations gathered at the University of Maryland, College Park, May 12 and 13, 2015, the NRC says. The group represented a diverse set of stakeholders, says the NRC. Presentations were made by Mathy Stanislaus, assistant administrator for the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, and Judith Enck, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 2 administrator.

Also speaking were:

• Ruth Abbe, Abbe & Associates, and president, Zero Waste USA;
• English Bird, executive director, New Mexico Recycling Coalition;
• Kathryn Garcia, commissioner, New York City Department of Sanitation;
• Bob Gedert, director, Austin Resource Recovery;
• Nina Goodrich, executive director, GreenBlue and Sustainable Packaging Coalition;
• David Levine, executive director, American Sustainable Business Council;
• Ryan McMullan, manager of environmental and safety, Toyota;
• Scott Mouw, North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources;
• Joe Pickard, chief economist, Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries; and
• Al Rattie, director of market development, U.S. Composting Council.

The NRC says dozens of creative concepts emerged and will become the basis for the National SMM Action Plan. The group says initial consensus was reached on the need for:

• making the business and jobs case for SMM;
• model policies, programs and laws for communities to further SMM;
• matching programs with performance metrics;
• connecting SMM strategies and professionals with businesses and product designers and local and state policy makers for improved consideration of full life cycle impacts and opportunities;
• incorporation of SMM into climate action plans;
• training and certifications of SMM professionals, recognizing that there are multiple options;
• evaluation and verification of product certifications to provide clear information for consumer choice and clear direction for businesses to comply with FTC (Federal Trade Commission) Green Marketing Guidelines (e.g., strong support for the How2Recycle label);
• best practices information and resources, including model ordinances and contracts; and
• education on downstream impacts on end markets and opportunities for investment in markets in the U.S.

“The future of SMM is critical for the thousands of NRC members and others across the country working each and every day to manage discards through source reduction, reuse recycling, composting, product stewardship and other diversion method,” says Gary Liss, summit co-chair. “These SMM professionals could benefit from being more a part of overall sustainability, triple-bottom-line and climate change initiatives. This will help solve other critical problems for communities and businesses at the same time and brings more allies to help on gaining approval for new policies, programs, facilities and funding.”

“This dialog and subsequent action plan will breathe new life into SMM programs and particularly ‘upstream’ efforts that need greater political support,” says Julie Rhodes, summit co-chair. “More attention to SMM could result in other help for SMM professionals such as more focus on redesign, better solutions for problems, more collaboration and new rules and incentives.”

The SMM Summit was led by the NRC in partnership with the Syracuse University Center for Sustainable Community Solutions and University of Maryland Environmental Finance Center and was supported by ISRI, Starbucks, the Steel Recycling Institute, ReTRAC, SCS Engineers, SMART Recycling South Carolina LLC, the Paper Recycling Coalition and Sims Recycling Solutions.