NOVEMBER 2023CONSTRUCTIONBUSINESSREVIEW.COM8IN MYOPINIONA number of experiences this year have had me thinking about how businesses that produce goods need to be thinking about those goods' next lives, or circularity.At GreenBiz23, an annual event for sustainable business leaders, I joined other sustainability leaders in in discussion on circularity, the idea that everything that gets created should have a second life, and a third, and so on. Not long after that, I was lucky enough to be on a recycling panel at the Association of Plastics Recycling's annual conference. Our team has also been talking about how sustainability in manufacturing influences our business practices, as we begin construction on a new engineering center, which will be, we believe, the world's most advanced stormwater engineering, re-search and development facility focused on product engineering, materials science and manufacturing technologies. On both my panels and in our discussions about creating more sustainable products, a few key themes emerged:1) We need to increase access to and awareness of recycling. That includes educating consumers about what can and cannot be recycled and increasing the amount of "used" material available to be recycled. The need is there; the system is not keeping up.2) We need to recover more recyclable materials from the waste stream and ensure that material is as clean as possible and kept with like material, rather than mixed. Mixing dilutes the effec-tiveness of recycled material, adds cost and reduces the likeli-hood it will be used. That is the opposite of what we want. 3) We all -- producers who use virgin materials, companies who want more recycled materials, recycling companies, researchers, policy makers, etc. -- need to work together to make recycling successful. There is no singular silver bullet. It is no secret among my network and peer group that I believe strongly that all business leaders need to do a better job of thinking about the second and third acts of their products and packaging, and it has been fascinating to be around other sustainability nerds, talking about recycling and how businesses and policies are succeeding or struggling in reaching our indi-vidual and collective sustainability goals.My panel at GreenBiz included a break-out session led by a team made up of a fiber recycler, an electronic waste (e-waste) recycler, a composter, and myself, a representative from the plastics recy-cling world. These are wildly different materials that are recycled in wildly different ways using significantly different technolo-gies. And yet, I was amazed at the similarities between us. For each and every one of our businesses, the limited access our country offers to recycling programs creates significant supply issues. Put another way: All our businesses want more recyclable or compostable material. And all of us are unable to get it, not because people don't want to recycle -- poll after poll proves they do. But people either don't have easy access to recy-cling services in their communities or don't know where in their communities to go to recycle. And, even if access to recycling exists, in many cases, people don't know what can or cannot be recycled. My co-panelist, the e-waste recycler, asked our audience how many of them had electronic devices in their homes that they weren't using and that should be recycled. In an audience of 250 people, every hand was raised. Another panelist asked if pizza boxes can be recycled. The results were decidedly mixed. About 50% of the hands were up. WALKING THE SUSTAINABILITY WALK: THE CASE FOR EPRBy Brian King, EVP Marketing, Product Management and Sustainability, Advanced Drainage Systems
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