Mayor Eric Adams is proposing eliminating the New York City community composting program and delaying rollout of curbside residential organics collection in certain boroughs by seven months as part of sweeping budget cuts. The proposal, published Thursday, is part of across-the-board 5% budget cuts Adams has directed all city agencies to make as the city faces a projected budget shortfall beginning this fiscal year and extending into future years. The mayor has indicated an additional 5% cut may be necessary again in January. The cuts would have ripple effects throughout the city’s management of organics and waste: reducing litter cleanup, shuttering farmer’s market food waste drop-off sites and ending funding for several mid-sized community composting sites, those familiar with the funding said. “It’s a tremendous loss,” Beth Slepian, vice chair of the Brooklyn Solid Waste Advisory Board, said. “This creates a huge access issue for people to composting.” In response to a request for comment, the mayor’s office cited a press conference held by the mayor Tuesday in which he said “I’m angry also” about the cuts. “Instead of doing that budget that I am excited about doing, we have to move in another direction and look at these cost savings to continue to have our city operate and to abide by the law,” Adams said. Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and Council Finance Chair James Brannan released a statement last week indicating skepticism about the planned cuts, saying they are “too blunt and not the prudent or sole choice.” The city council did not vote to approve a round of budget cuts last year, but the leaders said in their statement this year that they would negotiate with the administration over the November plan.  Community composting fallout New York City has funded local composting programs in various capacities since the NYC Compost Project began in 1993. Today, program partners divert more than 8.3 million pounds of organic waste each year, provide compost outreach and education to 600,000 city residents annually and train “master composters” through a city-run program, Justin Green, a partner in the program through his nonprofit Big Reuse, said.  Green, who runs compost operations in Gowanus and Queensbridge, said without the community composting program he’d be unable to pay operators for his two sites and may have to close them. That would remove two million annual pounds of organic waste processing capacity from the city, which Green said would be “devastating” for the communities that have come to expect a sustainable organic solution. “The community’s very supportive of it,” Green said. “It’s unusual for communities to be like, ‘No, we want composting to happen in our community.’ There’s that effort because they see the benefit and our process allows them to be involved in helping to turn their waste into a benefit.” The proposed cuts will impact 115 jobs in community composting, according to a petition circulated by GrowNYC urging the Adams administration to save the program. The proposed budget cuts would also impact 262 uniformed employees and 321 civilian employees across DSNY, according to the proposal.  Domingo Morales, founder of Compost Power, said “a lot of Black and brown people are going to lose their jobs,” many who are seeking a stable, green career path. “It’s horrible for them. They take this job because there’s hopes of breaking these barriers, diversifying the green economy,” Morales said. Morales got his start in Green City Force, an AmeriCorps program that works with young and unemployed public housing residents. The program placed him at a composting facility in Red Hook, where he received training and began a career that continues today.  But Morales said the facility, which was supported by DSNY, faced staffing challenges depending on the city’s financial health. Today, he’s turned his attention toward building composting programs at public housing sites without financial support from DSNY, in part because the agency laid him off during the coronavirus pandemic. He describes the budget uncertainty facing organizations involved in the community composting program as “cyclical torture.” Morales said the cuts, which occur just a few years after the pandemic affected funding for organics programs, should provoke a broader conversation about the detrimental impacts of relying on the whims of New York City’s budget.  “We're supporting something that is volatile,” Morales said. “We need to have a healthy conversation to build a system in New York City that is sustainable, regardless of what the mayor's office is able to afford.” Green, executive director of Big Reuse, said he would need to lay off his 10-person community composting team and nine outreach employees, nearly half of his full-time staff. Lower East Side Ecology Center Executive Director Christine Datz-Romero said she would have to lay off 10 of her 17 full-time staff members.  Collection and infrastructure effects The cuts will hamstring efforts to broaden community support for composting at a time when the city is planning to expand its services, several sources said. The U.S. EPA announced last week it was granting DSNY $2 million to support outreach efforts, but that’s outweighed by a proposed $4.1 million reduction in outreach and communications at the department in the coming fiscal year. Vincent Gragnani, press secretary for DSNY, said in an email that the grant money would not be affected by the proposed budget cuts, but DSNY is “still working on an implementation plan for the grant.” He declined to comment further on the cuts. DSNY is also proposing delaying the rollout of curbside organics collection in the Bronx and Staten Island from April to October of 2024. The program has already begun in Queens and Brooklyn. Datz-Romero said residents will lose confidence in the city’s ability to handle organics as a result of the cuts and delays, comparing it to recycling budget cuts that affected DSNY in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. “We have seen the credibility of recycling programs really suffer if there are suspensions,” Datz-Romero said. “People will scratch their heads to understand, so why is this delayed if it's that important?” Datz-Romero said DSNY has already instructed her to begin the process of shutting down certain operations by Dec. 31 in preparation for the cuts. The LES Ecology Center had also been preparing to build and operate a composting site in the Canarsie neighborhood of Brooklyn when the cuts were announced last week. Now, despite having put in time and money to clear the site, receive the necessary permits, hire a construction manager and evaluate bid proposals for construction, DSNY is ending the plans. “There’s a lot of work that has gotten done in preparation for this, and all of that is basically now wasted effort and money because the money to build the facility has disappeared,” Datz-Romero said. Brenda Platt, director of ILSR's Composting for Community Initiative, said the loss of community composting outreach and training for new Master Composters will lead to less educated residents who feel less of a connection to the waste stream. Platt notes that certain independent composting sites, including those run by Compost Power, will likely remain even after the budget cuts. But she said the loss of educational and training programs will hinder the growth of a system that builds “the social resilience of New York communities and the physical resilience of the infrastructure in New York.” “They become these laboratories of seeding these people and these programs all throughout New York City,” Platt said. “This is really a devastating loss that's going to reverberate to dozens if not hundreds of other community gardens and composters in the city.” New York City Council Sanitation Chair Sandy Nurse said councilmembers like herself had hoped that language in the Zero Waste Act passed in June would have done more to protect the community composting program. One of the provisions of the law requires DSNY to ensure there are at least 30 organic waste drop-off sites citywide, with at least three in each borough. She said councilmembers may propose new legislation to better protect the program's partners and the education, outreach and composting work they do. "We're going to fight and try as hard as possible to restore funding," Nurse said. “To have such a drastic cut off in such a short period of time is truly unacceptable.”

“Teamwork makes the dream work” was the dominant theme at the Packaging Recycling Summit in Atlanta last week. Speakers dove into the importance of partnerships to improve domestic packaging recycling efforts and overcome leading barriers, such as consumer confusion. “Partnerships are going to be really important, because ... these issues are huge,” said Rebecca Marquez, director of custom research at PMMI (The Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies). “There's a lot of people that play a part in these issues, and it's going to be impossible for one set of people — CPGs, OEMs, recyclers — to do everything on their own.” Marquez highlighted the importance of collaboration at a time when sustainability efforts are transforming the packaging industry. “Change is not coming. It’s here, and it’s really, really rapid,” she said. Underscoring that point, she shared data from PMMI surveys of CPGs and contract packagers this year assessing how often they’re changing packaging materials. In January, 58% said they changed materials less than once per year, 30% said one to two times per year and 3% said more than six times per year. When asked the same question again at Pack Expo in Las Vegas in September, 18% said they now change materials more than six times per year. “That is incredible,” Marquez said. “To change the materials on a line is extremely complicated.” Rebecca Marquez, director of custom research at PMMI, details the rapid changes occurring in packaging and recycling as brands aim to meet sustainability goals, at the Packaging Recycling Summit in Atlanta on Nov. 6, 2023. Katie Pyzyk/Packaging Dive   But as materials change, that affects stakeholders down the value chain, including recyclers.  “Recyclers don't want to take in materials that they can't resell into a market,” Marquez said. “We’ve got to work together to create new markets. We have to work together to innovate what goes on at sortation facilities.” Collaborating on recycling involves improved messaging and education for consumers, who regularly report confusion with current recycling systems. That confusion often results in consumers not participating in recycling programs or trying to recycle the wrong materials, which increases contamination, speakers said. That’s a problem considering “end users are really demanding higher quality material,” according to Jeff Snyder, director of recycling at Ohio-based Rumpke Waste & Recycling. Further illustrating consumer confusion, 70% of plastic packaging materials whose resin codes are one, two and five go to the landfill in the United States today, Snyder said, despite Rumpke repeatedly putting out the message that it wants those materials. “The big struggle for us is just people not understanding the process and not understanding what to do.” Along with that, some brand and packaging manufacturer decisions create confusion for consumers and trouble for MRFs. They should keep materials simple and “stop making Franken-plastic,” or multi-resin, multi-layer materials, because it “doesn’t help us. The consumer doesn’t get it,” said Peter Adrian, recycling coordinator at the Solid Waste Agency of Lake County, Illinois. “[Consumers] don’t know that film in a flexible pack has seven layers of plastic in it” and think it looks all the same and is recyclable. Trying to handle certain multilayer materials “can contaminate our screen” and removing that adds cost, said Jane Fridley De Bigit, procurement and sales manager at Minnesota-based film recycler Myplas USA. “Also, anything biodegradable, if you put that into a recycling stream, that contaminates the whole run.” Another example is that PET water bottles, which are widely recyclable in curbside programs, don’t always get identified in a MRF if they are completely covered in film shrink wrap labels rather than a smaller label. In those cases, an optical sorter senses only the film wrap and doesn’t recognize the item as a PET bottle, said Joy Rifkin, sustainability manager at Illinois-based recycler LRS. “We talk to packaging designers to say, if you’re going to use a soft plastic label, don’t cover the whole bottle,” she said. In messaging for consumers “we say, ‘If it’s soft plastic you can smash, it goes in the trash,’” or to film drop-off sites. Despite MRF operators adding increasingly sophisticated equipment and robotics to their facilities, machinery can’t do it all. Speakers pointed out that humans along the value chain still have to do their part to improve recycling, and working together generates better results than working in silos. They suggested that brands and packaging manufacturers partner with recyclers from the get-go during product design to mitigate issues down the line — especially as brands switch materials to help meet sustainability goals. Procter and Gamble regularly collaborates with Rumpke to test if and how certain packaging can make it through the MRF before releasing a new or redesigned version. For example, they partnered on a pilot project that affixed radiofrequency identification, or RFID, tags to certain products, like deodorant containers, and “the whole idea is [to find out] where do they go in the MRF, what happens to them, do they go where they’re supposed to go and can they be recovered?” said Snyder. Jeff Snyder, recycling director at Rumpke Waste & Recycling, and Mark Agerton, group scientist on Procter & Gamble's responsible packaging R&D team, discuss how partnerships from different parts of the value chain improve recycling, at the Packaging Recycling Summit in Atlanta on Nov. 7, 2023. Katie Pyzyk/Packaging Dive   Substrate switches away from plastic and toward alternatives like fiber are occurring more as brands aim to fulfill their sustainability commitment goals, according to Mark Agerton, group scientist on P&G’s responsible packaging R&D team. Collaborating across the value chain is necessary to ensure that not only can packaging make it through existing collection and sortation systems, but also that desirable, stable end markets exist for the materials. P&G also realizes that mechanical recycling isn’t viable for every application, and it’s therefore exploring opportunities for advanced recycling, or chemical recycling, especially for drug or food-safe packaging, Agerton said.  “We’re trying to bring these materials all back in,” he said. “We're trying to partner to understand what's happening at the commercial level so that we can start driving that innovation.” Interested in more packaging news? Sign up for Packaging Dive’s newsletter today.

Austin, Texas, adopted a new plan last week to renew efforts to help the city achieve its goal of zero waste by 2040. Austin first adopted the goal, which envisions diverting 90% of trash from landfills by 2040, in its comprehensive plan in 2011. The city has grown rapidly since that time while also building out a more comprehensive system for addressing waste. Austin’s population grew by more than 20% over the last decade, according to the plan. Meanwhile, extreme weather events like 2021’s Winter Storm Uri have exposed cracks in the resilience of the city and state’s infrastructure. Nevertheless, Austin Resource Recovery, the agency in charge of implementing solid waste policies, has set out a series of action items that it believes can bring the city within reach of its zero waste goal. They include building out new drop-off centers for material recovery, expanding recycling and composting services and bolstering data collection in a city where 85% of trash is hauled by private companies.  The plan noted the progress made since 2011. The city has, in the past, expressed concern over its stalled diversion rate, which currently sits at 37.6%. But the zero waste plan also notes that Austin’s recycling rate today is 36% higher than the national average, and the amount of waste produced per person per day has fallen from 5.6 pounds in 1995 to 4 pounds in 2022. Progress continues via the city’s universal recycling ordinance as well, which ARR continues to look for ways to supplement after completing the roll out of curbside compost collection in 2021. “These efforts represent a sustained cycle of continuous improvement that will benefit our entire ecosystem,” ARR Director Richard McHale said in a statement accompanying the plan. “As discarded and surplus materials are diverted from landfills and turned into useful resources, people within and beyond the borders of Austin and Central Texas will enjoy cleaner and more sustainable communities.” Infrastructure Austin is mulling the creation of a transfer station, which it determined was economically viable based on the distance between collection and the TDS Landfill where ARR currently delivers trash.  The city's current disposal agreement with the landfill ends in 2030. Further ahead, the nine-county area in Central Texas has about 24 years of remaining landfill capacity. The agency predicts multiple benefits from a transfer facility, including the potential for electrification — ARR's fleet currently travels distances too for the range of existing electric trucks, according to the plan. Reducing collection fleet travel time could also reduce overall costs while allowing ARR to extend the life of its vehicles and reduce the number of vehicles and routes. Planning for a transfer station is still in the early stages, as the agency still needs to conduct a full planning and budget assessment for such a project. WM is also planning a transfer station at its Austin Community Landfill, per the plan. "As our region continues to grow and volumes of trash, recycling, and organics increase, the development of a transfer station that can manage multiple material streams will become critically important to ARR’s ability to offer competitive service rates to residents," the plan notes. Meanwhile, the city is also planning to develop a North Austin Recycle and Reuse Drop-Off facility to increase the convenience for residents looking to drop off hard-to-recycle materials. The current Recycle & Reuse Drop-Off Center, operated by the city, managed 1,809 tons of materials in 2020. But the plan notes that in 2019, one-third of the visitors to the RRDOC came from the four zip codes closest to it in South Austin, meaning distance to the facility hindered accessibility for some residents. The plan envisions developing a north RRDOC in the near term, and it is looking at other options to expand infrastructure — including at the now-closed FM 812 landfill owned by the city — over the long term. Collections The city's universal recycling ordinance, which was first enacted in 2010 and reached full enforcement in 2018, allows the ARR to exercise more oversight over diversion activities in Austin. The zero waste plan notes there's plenty of room for multifamily residences and commercial businesses to improve their diversion rates. Hauling for those properties is conducted via an open market of private haulers, 11 of which service URO properties. Those haulers reported that in 2021, 73.3% of the waste they collected went to landfills, while 22.2% was recyclables and 4.5% was organics. The data shows "significant progress" is needed on that front to meet Austin's zero waste target, the plan's authors note. In 2020, the city hired two code compliance officers to build out capacity for enforcing the URO. In 2021, those officers conducted more than 700 site visits and responded to five complaints, per the plan. The plan envisions stepping up enforcement activity going forward. It also anticipates developing "base-level service and diversion activity requirements for all businesses," and potentially tiered requirements on the recycling and organics fronts for businesses.  As part of the plan's URO vision, ARR also noted it would explore a multifamily composting policy. Such a policy would increase access to organics diversion for multifamily residents, according to the plan. The agency also anticipates updating its ordinance to take into account valet collection services, potentially requiring valet recycling service to be offered where valet trash service is provided in the next five years. The agency also is open to allowing different ways for commercial entities to address organic waste, including by allowing some large generators to process food waste on-site.

When Tara Hemmer took on the role of WM’s chief sustainability officer in 2021, it was the first publicly traded waste and recycling company to create such a position.  In the years since, Hemmer has been vocal about how sustainability investments can boost business by generating cleaner commodities through tech upgrades and by improving labor costs and safety. She also works to highlight WM’s sustainability initiatives to the general public, most recently as a presenting sponsor at a Washington Post Live event on Wednesday.  At the event, Hemmer underscored the role WM must play in combating climate change and discussed how the company has shifted in recent years to focus on broader circularity initiatives. The company plans to invest $1 billion in recycling projects, in part to expand its recycling presence in North America. It also has ongoing investments in renewable natural gas infrastructure and other projects. Other event speakers included Ali Zaidi, the White House national climate advisor, who discussed the future of electric vehicles and infrastructure, along with chef Rob Rubba and clothing company founder Anne Marie Johnson, who talked about how sustainable business models can reduce food waste and textile waste. In an interview with Waste Dive after the event, Hemmer said WM plans to stay at the forefront of sustainability innovations while also doing a better job of educating the public about what happens to their waste and recycling.  “We want people to understand that the waste industry, and in particular WM, has evolved so much,” she said. “We want to make sure that the solutions that we bring to the table aren't just relevant, but are cutting edge when you think about where the world is headed.”  This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Back in April, during WM’s sustainability investor presentation, the company previewed investments in recycling infrastructure projects meant to expand access for markets where WM wasn’t currently operating, particularly areas with a growing population. What’s the latest on those? In Fort Walton Beach, [Florida], we didn't have a recycling facility there, and no one had a recycling facility there. So this is a great example of bringing new access to recycling infrastructure. With us being at the middle of the hub and spoke, we can work directly with municipalities to offer recycling as a service to their customers and work with commercial businesses. If you think about what happened during the pandemic, you had a lot of people that moved from different areas of the country. Many of them moved to the Florida Panhandle, had recycling as a service at their other locations, and then got to [an area of Florida without those services] and said to their elected officials, ‘What's going on here?’ So it's a great example of expanding access and reach.  Another great example is our Cleveland MRF. We had a much smaller facility in Akron, Ohio, that served a portion of the Cleveland market. But building the new facility in our Cleveland market, we were able to expand capacity and access there. As a final example, we talk about the investment in single-stream facilities, but what we don’t talk about as much is C&D facilities. One of those facilities that we've brought online is in Nashville. Expanding access and reach of construction and demolition debris processing is very significant for us. This really goes beyond traditional single-stream recycling. That, of course, is a key piece of our automation thesis.  You mention automation and technology upgrades, which are huge investments not just for WM but also most other major waste companies these days.  What’s the long-term strategy for how WM invests in recycling technology, especially as materials streams change and the company begins to consider pilot programs for materials that aren’t typically accepted curbside?  A pretty significant portion of the investments that we're making is in our optical sorters. Traditionally you would have maybe two or three optical sorters in a single-stream recycling facility. Now we might have 16 to 20, and those 16 to 20 optical sorters are doing so many different things. Some of them are pulling out paper and cardboard, PET and HDPE natural. We can program them to look at the materials that are in the stream today that have robust end markets, and we can program them in the future to look for materials that could increasingly be important for end markets.  The best example I always use is yogurt containers. It is a small piece of the stream, but for a while there was no end market for it. Well, this is a great example where WM collaborated with the technology providers, the end users who were going to [generate more yogurt containers in curbside streams] and also the CPG companies. We said, ‘If we look for it, will you buy it on the back end?’ And as a result, you know, we've been able to improve the capture of that one commodity type by over 40%, and that’s material that previously would have gone into residue. From a technology perspective, we also have some select markets where we have robots that really do more finishing work on the back end—picking out materials out of residue, for example— but the great thing that we've been seeing is we're improving the quality of our material and of every commodity type. We're able to capture more material and we're seeing residue rates go down at our automated facilities. Labor costs are down roughly 35%.  You’ve also done some pilot programs for collecting plastic film. What’s the future for that, business-wise, and what role does tech play in those decisions? As you know, most if not all single stream programs don't allow film, right? But we still get film each and every day coming through our facilities, partly because people still bag their recyclables. We started to work with some partners, including Dow, to say, ‘We’re going to collect that film that's not supposed to be in the stream. If we collect it, will you buy it and market it?’ Now that we've invested in technology in our facilities that can help us pull the film out, we thought, let's try and test this in a community by allowing all plastic to go into the bin there.  The reason why testing this is important is we don't want to have unintended consequences. The worst thing we can do is all of a sudden not be able to capture all of the other commodity types that are extremely valuable. We know that CPG companies are looking for solutions for film and also for flexibles, so this is a great example of how we can be a part of really understanding what might be possible. Where does chemical recycling fit into WM’s longer-term sustainability plans? WM itself is not a chemical recycler, but you're potentially handling tons of materials that chemical recyclers have expressed interest in. WM manages materials. Every single one of those petrochemical companies is coming to us seeking some of that material because their customers want a more circular solution to be able to put recycled content back into the products that they put on shelves. By any measure, when we look at the solution set, there's a strong place for mechanical recycling. In the future, there will be a place for chemical recycling.  We also have to look at the emissions impact of mechanical versus chemical. It's clear that mechanical will have a strong role and continued role in the future, and chemical will be a piece that makes sense for the harder-to-recycle streams. We’re in an era where the problems we’re trying to tackle are hard, and how can we drive more strategic partnerships to solve some of these problems?  Where do reuse and reduction strategies come into WM’s sustainability process? WM doesn't talk about this much, but I think it's one of our greatest stories that needs to be told a bit more. We have an arm of our company that rolls up directly under me called WM Sustainability Solutions. We have [customers] who work at plant locations — think large automotive, large petrochemical, large manufacturing, large distribution centers — and we work with those locations on waste reduction and minimization strategies. If they have hazardous waste, how do we get that hazardous waste to be nonhazardous? If they have harder-to-recycle materials, perhaps PET strapping from bales, we work with them to find an outlet for that. We've been able to expand our customer base as a result. This is a business that has been in place for close to 20 years and has really been born out of the expertise WM has of what happens with these materials. If we can work with customers on their own waste minimization journey, it’s something that can unlock a lot of opportunity for both of our companies. Pretty much every company is on their own sustainability journey, and waste is a key element of it. It's become really an increasing customer trend for us as the business is growing.

To make zero waste programs truly effective, projects must center marginalized communities and put inclusivity at the forefront of the work, said speakers at the National Zero Waste Conference. During a virtual panel discussion Thursday on equity in zero waste programs, panelists described how disadvantaged people in Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as in the Philippines, are shaping zero waste efforts and lending their expertise. One part of California’s broad waste diversion strategy is to reduce single-use food ware, but some restaurants in disadvantaged areas have faced challenges transitioning to reusables. They’re also facing pressure from AB 1276, a law passed in 2021, that prohibits full-service restaurants from providing single-use plastic straws or food service ware unless the customer requests it. Costs or other “limiting factors,” such as lack of information about the recent law, are major barriers for businesses, said Kelly York, sustainability and waste minimization manager at environmental services consultant APTIM. She discussed general best practices that APTIM has developed while working on a range of sustainability projects. York did not mention specific projects during her presentation, but LA Sanitation & Environment recently announced a reusable food ware microgrant program for small businesses in “economically and environmentally challenged neighborhoods” that need financial assistance in order to switch to reusable or compostable options. LASAN and Los Angeles City Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez said project organizers worked with APTIM and local sustainability organizations to do outreach and education. The most successful partnerships often involved visiting businesses numerous times and speaking with business owners in their preferred language, York said. APTIM also conducted surveys of business owners’ perspectives and identified small steps to transitioning away from specific items like single-use trays, she said. Building relationships with business owners to identify priorities and barriers takes time, but it’s crucial to establish trust and connect businesses with zero waste solutions that work best for them, York said. “It helps us to better understand the gaps between current practices and a more sustainable future and connects us on a more personal level,” she said.  California is also in the midst of enacting SB 1383, which calls for reducing organic waste disposal 75% by 2025 and reducing the state’s total edible food waste 20% by 2030. Edible food recovery is a facet of that goal.  Marria Evbuoma, founder of Rotation Community Services, highlighted how grassroots and community-centered groups such as Food Not Bombs, White Pony Express and local mutual aid organizations have long been collecting and redistributing food to unhoused and marginalized people before SB 1383 was passed.  These groups not only play an important role in food waste diversion, but also in helping community members who are often left out of sustainability conversations, Evbuoma said. Such community-centered groups understand how food insecurity can intersect with other factors such as housing insecurity, race, class, gender, mental health and substance use, she said. Numerous community groups recently came together in San Francisco’s Richmond District to help reduce trash at an encampment for people experiencing homelessness. Residents there said they didn’t have access to regular trash service and had also been discarding clothing along with their trash because they didn’t have access to laundry facilities. The community groups hosted a cleanup day, where they conducted a waste characterization survey, organized a donation drive and provided laundry services. They also collected discarded bottles and cans for redemption and donated the proceeds to organizations who had been working with unhoused residents. The neighborhood was able to reduce waste, but also foster long-term relationships, Evbuoma said. “We're creating networks so that not only are we just helping people, we are really looking at the root causes of these challenges and problems in our community and figuring out ways to transform them,” she said.  The global informal waste worker sector is also made up of vulnerable and marginalized groups, and their work is a critical part of making zero waste efforts a success, said Zen Borlongan, national coordinator for the Mother Earth Foundation. The organization helps connect informal waste workers with job training and skills development, as well as healthcare and educational support. Borlongan works in the Philippines, where an estimated 100,000 people work in informal waste jobs but earn less than minimum wage and often don’t have access to stable housing, healthcare or government benefits, she said.  Communities around the world can learn from the expertise that informal waste workers provide, she said. Part of the Mother Earth Foundation’s work is to help waste workers advocate for themselves at municipal and governmental meetings about waste management and safety issues. Borlongan also advocates for international laws and policies that could protect waste workers, provide access to better health and safety benefits, and bring dignity and respect to their jobs.  “We are grateful to our waste workers for joining hands with us. Surely and steadily, they are recognizing their impact on the future we are all working for,” she said. Editor’s note: This story has been updated with more specific attribution for the details of LASAN’s reusable food ware program.

Dive Brief: The U.S. EPA is doling out millions of dollars in pollution prevention, or P2, grants to local governments looking to prevent waste thanks to increased funding levels. That includes nearly $16 million in grants announced earlier this month to 24 state and local governments and universities. "P2 grants are now supercharged," EPA official Jennie Romer said during a webinar on Wednesday. "[The new funding] goes far and above anything that we've ever seen before and it's already working right now in communities across the nation." The grants are funding technical assistance for programs like a reusable food ware system in Hawai'i and a plastic prevention program in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Dive Insight: Prior to her current role, Romer was the Surfrider Foundation plastic pollution policy expert. (2021). Retrieved from U.S. EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.   At the National Zero Waste Conference last week, Romer said she is looking to bridge connections between her Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention and the broader zero waste world. The EPA's Pollution Prevention program disbursed $50 million between 2011 and 2021. But the program has been bolstered in recent years through roughly $100 million in funding from the 2021 infrastructure law and Inflation Reduction Act, plus the hiring of attorney and environmental advocate Romer as the first deputy assistant administrator for pollution prevention. From 2011 to 2021, the program facilitated the reduction of 458,500 tons of hazardous materials, saved 49 billion gallons of water, and avoided 19.8 million metric tons of greenhouse gases, according to the EPA. The agency also says it saved businesses $2.2 billion. The grants, disbursed to universities, states or local governments, are largely designed to provide technical assistance to communities and local businesses looking to replace or reduce the use of wasted products. The latest round of grants was announced Oct. 12.  As part of the Biden administration's Justice40 initiative, much of the funding also has an environmental justice focus. In Chicago, the University of Illinois will be using nearly $684,000 in grant funding specifically to assist restaurants led by Black or indigenous people of color in avoiding food service packaging with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. The EPA says the program will reduce plastic waste, promote landfill diversion, reduce contamination in composting and promote consumer-driven sustainability.  An additional $800,000 administered by the university's Urbana-Champaign campus will provide technical assistance to other businesses looking to move toward PFAS-free food ware products. In Hilo, the University of Hawai'i is providing technical assistance to businesses to help create a communitywide reusable food ware system. At the conference on Wednesday, Romer said the system would be safe and affordable, and called it a "very big deal." She said it's an example of EPA's P2 program leaders "thinking of ways of how can we maximize that investment, to see how impactful we can be in shifting towards reusables." "It's one of the many areas we work, but one that I'm paying particular attention to," Romer said.  The new round of grants also includes programs in Oregon and Washington state to help businesses purchase products certified by the EPA's Safer Choice program, and in South Carolina to help businesses use safer packaging products identified through EPA’s Recommendations of Specifications, Standards, and Ecolabels. Another $699,000 grant to the U.S. Virgin Islands Department of Planning and Natural Resources will provide technical assistance to businesses looking to reduce single-use plastic waste. In Romer's presentation, she also highlighted the comments EPA has made on the Federal Trade Commission's potential Green Guides update to ensure marketing claims about recycling are accurate. "I sit in our chemicals office ... but I like to talk about truthful marketing of what's recyclable as part of preventing pollution and protecting human health and the environment," Romer said. "The Federal Trade Commission's review of Green Guides aligns well with EPA's work and our focus on improving plastic product circularity."