Economics and the Environment: Benefits of Integrated Waste Management Programs

In 2014 and 2015, the Institute for Local Government (ILG) worked closely with CalRecycle under contract to develop a variety of guidance documents and webinars to help elected officials and stakeholders understand the economic impacts of recycling as well as plan and finance new recycling facilities. The following documents and much more can be found online at ILG’s online Recycling Resource Center:

• Connecting the Dots: Recycling, Climate and Economic Development
• Financing Recycling Programs and Facilities: Understanding Options and Resources
• Recycling Roadmap- How to Plan, Site and Finance Your Recycling Facility
• The True Cost of Recycling: How California Communities are Financing and Siting Recycling Infrastructure

How can the presentation help you?

The presentation can help those who need to prepare or propose solid waste budgets, educate policymakers or orient new board/commission members, explain the state’s disposal reduction (Integrated Waste Management Act [IWMA]) mandate, or propose new programs.
The presentation explains the brochure entitled Recycling: Good for the Environment/Good for the Economy.

You can use the brochure to:

• Counteract the tendency of local decision-makers to cut funding for recycling and market development programs when local budgets are tight because recycling’s environmental benefits may not be readily apparent. Local jurisdictions can do more to create jobs and generate tax revenue by maintaining or enhancing local recycling/diversion programs than by reducing or eliminating those programs.
• Keep public and private recyclers and local jurisdictions diverting material at and beyond California’s 50 percent waste disposal reduction mandate.
• Protect the flow of recycled feedstock to processors and manufacturers, and protect the waste management industry’s capital investment in recycling and composting infrastructure.
• Persuade lenders to treat the recycling industry like any other. Recycling is good for the local economy, as well as the environment.
• Convince economic developers of the significance of this manufacturing sector. Recycling creates twice as many jobs as disposal while helping to keep the land, air, and water clean and saving valuable energy.