CMRA Meets With EPA Officials

The Construction Materials Recycling Association was one of the six industrial material recycling associations discussing issues facing those industries in a daylong meeting with top officials of the U.S. EPA’s Office of Solid Waste.

The event was part of meeting of the Industrial Resources Council (IRC), of which the CMRA is a founding member. The other materials discussed included foundry sand, coal ash, slag, tires, and pulp and paper residues, which face many of the same barriers to being recycled as does C&D debris, including questions about engineering characteristics, aversion to trying something new and regulator reluctance. Yet these materials can, in most cases, do the job as well as virgin materials. What the IRC wanted was help from the EPA in overcoming the artificial barriers that are put up, especially by state governmental agencies.

The EPA is interested in seeing more recycling of these materials and is reviewing a few options. These include getting together the stakeholders from both the recycling side and those agencies that do not support recycling, and other options.