Austin, TX Resource Recovery Charts a New Course to Achieving Zero Waste

SEATTLE (Waste Advantage): City Council adopted a new path to salvation for Austin’s landfills. A self-proclaimed “road map toward zero waste,” Austin Resource Recovery’s existing 2011 Master Plan committed Austin to near total solid waste diversion from landfills by 2040. Now with just under two decades to go – and diverting only 40% of materials from landfills in 2020 despite a goal of 75% – the Master Plan is getting a facelift. Or, rather, an “update,” as ARR dubs its newly released Comprehensive Plan.

The nascent document identifies among a spate of challenges three central obstacles to achieving its now-teenaged zero waste goal. The first two are familiar: Austin has experienced a 20% population increase over the past decade (a surprisingly low metric, frankly) and now regularly encounters “abnormal” weather events that can disrupt services. In response, the Comprehensive Plan acknowledges that since they (both people and meteorological tumult) have already come, it’s probably time to build it: more infrastructure, more recycling and circular economy education programs, and more access to digital tools and collection services.

Far more confounding, however, is a characteristically Texan third obstacle: waste stream privatization. The Comprehensive Plan estimates that private companies collect 85% of the city’s waste, up from 75% in 2010. Such privatization, it says, precludes the city from being able to collect accurate data on its progress towards achieving zero waste, as companies fear that any numbers they share will become public record – and ammunition for competitors. Its solution to this foil? For starters, tracking the capture rate of specific materials and landfill diversion rate per capita, while also improving its own technologies and conducting routine waste characterization studies.

Courtesy: www.wasteadvantage.com