The U.S. EPA has announced its effort to promote the GreenScapes Alliance, with one of its aims to influence government and corporate purchasing patterns to include more grounds maintenance recycled-content products and materials, including mulch and wood chips made from scrap wood.
In a mid-November announcement made at the GreenBuild International Conference & Expo, held in Pittsburgh, the EPA touted GreenScapes as a way to “combine government and industry into a powerful, unified influence over the reduction, reuse, and recycling of waste materials in large land use applications.”
EPA Senior Program Analyst Jean M. Schwab remarked that GreenScapes will “look outside the building envelope” to include bolstering the use of recycled aggregates, landscape materials and green waste.
She said contractors, project managers, landscape architects, purchasing specifiers and others will be urged to consider, “the four Rs” when making decisions: the traditional three Rs of reduce, re-use and recycle as well as “re-buying,” which Schwab defined as “re-thinking purchasing decisions.”
Land use activities specifically targeted by the EPA, according to its news release, will include 4 million miles of roadside landscaping, “brownfields” land redevelopment sites, and the beautification and maintenance of office complexes, golf courses, and parks. “More than 100,000 businesses are involved in these land use activities, and are potential participants in the alliance,” said Schwab.
The new alliance is a component of the agency’s Resource Conservation Challenge, which is an EPA initiative that identifies non-mandated ways to conserve natural resources and energy.
The GreenScapes Alliance will specifically take the following steps in its attempts to boost recycling markets:
- Provide information about the cost savings that can be achieved from reducing material use and waste, resource conservation, and on the performance and durability of environmentally preferable products such as recycled-content and bio-based products.
- Promote market expansion and growth of recycled-content and bio-based products.
- Educate land managers that environmentally beneficial landscaping efforts yield water and energy savings, conserves landfill space and reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
- Publicize case studies, success stories, and technical assistance to help alleviate concerns regarding alternative practices and products.
- Award organizations that achieve environmental excellence in reduction, reuse, recycling, and “re-buying” for waste prevention and pollution prevention.
Potential GreenScapes “Partners” and “Allies” can include land owners and state environmental agencies as well as business owners from a wide variety of industries, including: 70,000+ landscape contractors and landscape care and maintenance companies; 16,000 golf courses; approximately 11,000 highway and street paving and road building companies; and 3,066 U.S. counties that do highway maintenance in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.
Those seeking more information about GreenScapes philosophies, or to become a participant in the GreenScapes Alliance, can visit its Web Site at www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/green.