Florida sets recycling goal of 75% by 2020
By: John Booth
September 14, 2009

In June 2008, Florida aimed high, establishing a statewide recycling goal of 75% by the year 2020, and setting a Jan. 1, 2010, deadline for the state’s Department of Environmental Protection to come up with a plan for reaching it.

But even as that deadline draws near, economic uncertainties and debates over key proposals make it tough to tell what the final plan will look like.

“It’s going to be challenging, there’s no doubt about it,” said Ron Henricks, Florida’s recycling program administrator. “It’s going to take mandates, and it will take some money from the state, and it will take grants to local governments.”

It may also take some rethinking of how the state looks at what is considered recycling. For instance, as of 2007 (the most recent year for which data is available), about 12% of Florida’s solid waste was burned in waste and energy plants. Henricks noted that under a new system of measuring recycling, waste burned for energy and landfill gases used to produce electricity will be considered toward the recycling goal, though it’s unclear exactly how.

On a more easily measurable front, Florida’s 2007 recycling rate was 28%. And since half the state’s municipal solid waste stream is comprised of paper (25%) and construction and demolition debris (25%), the DEP’s preliminary recommendations — shared most recently at an Aug. 4 public hearing in Orlando — include big steps in addressing those areas.

One idea calls for requiring all construction and demolition waste to be processed at a material recovery facility prior to disposal, separating the recyclable material from the nonrecyclable. No other states have such a policy in place. Most of Florida’s material recovery facilities can be found in southern Florida, where disposal costs are much higher, and mandating upfront processing would mean more facilities would have to be built throughout the state, Henricks said.

And while waste paper already has a fairly high recycling rate in Florida (40% to 45%), the DEP said that mandating commercial paper recycling in the state’s most populous cities and counties would raise that significantly.

But plans and programs need money, and that’s where things get foggy: The Florida state legislature, already facing another tight fiscal session in 2010, has final say over the DEP’s proposals, and new funding may be hard to come by.

In hopes of raising money to fund the recycling push, the DEP’s preliminary recommendations include a deposit-collecting bottle bill similar to those in other states, and a $1 per ton landfill disposal surcharge. Henricks estimates the former could bring in $35 million to $40 million annually, while the latter could generate about $17 million per year.

“They’re both self-limiting funding resources,” he said by way of a selling point. “They automatically flare out the better you get with your recycling.”

But they also face stiff opposition from a big player in Florida business.

Keyna Cory, chief lobbyist for Associated Industries of Florida, said that while the business advocacy group supports efforts to improve recycling, AIF has concerns with the process and several DEP proposals. For starters, she said, the 75% number “was pulled out of the air” with no consideration of its feasibility or impact. While DEP recommendations do call for an update to the Florida Recycling Economic Information Study done in 2000, Cory said that’s where the project should have begun. Send comments about this story to editorial@wastenews.com.

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