2000 Annual Report: Market Development

Market Development Topics

Introduction RMDZ RMDZ Loan Program Jobs Through Recycling Private Buy Recycled Priority Materials Organics  Construction & Demolition  Paper Minimum Content Programs State Agency Responsibility

The IWMB has always considered market development--stimulating demand by individuals, businesses, and the public sector for recycled-content products (RCP)--as one of the long-term keys to the success of AB 939. Market development requires massive investments in collection, processing, and manufacturing infrastructure and at the same time, a detailed understanding of how prices and demand for recycled commodities and products are buffeted by national and international economic trends. Not surprisingly, moving tens of millions of tons of newly collected materials into products that people want to buy is not something that can readily happen overnight.

In its early years, the IWMB focused its efforts and limited discretionary funding on providing technical assistance to local jurisdictions developing diversion programs and the state’s collection and processing infrastructure. It also expended considerable resources in promulgating the regulatory structure for AB 939’s planning and local reporting processes.

Even so, the IWMB understood that market development efforts needed to start long before the 2000 deadline loomed. Through the mid-1990s, for example, the IWMB implemented the nation’s first Recycling Market Development Zone (RMDZ) program, with low-interest loans to manufacturers; sought and received legislative changes in State procurement policies regarding RCPs; and began funding compost demonstration projects in agriculture. It also strengthened implementation of legislatively mandated “minimum content” programs for newsprint and plastic trash bags by including criteria for triggering audits of regulated entities. And, based on extensive staff research and public input, the IWMB adopted a Market Development Plan in 1993, and a modified version in 1996. This was later modified by the IWMB’s 1997 Strategic Plan, which delineated “priority” areas that the IWMB felt warranted further emphasis. This included construction and demolition debris and organic materials. Activities undertaken by the IWMB to implement the Market Development Plan and subsequent Strategic Plan for the year 2000 can be found throughout this annual report.

In the last four years, the IWMB has been able to devote more of its resources to direct market development activities. In addition, the Legislature allocated $4 million in 1998 and again in 1999 to support these activities. The IWMB’s approach has been multi-faceted, including:

• Using the State’s purchasing power to increase demand for RCPs.
• Targeting staff and discretionary funding resources on “priority” areas such as organic materials and construction and demolition debris.
• Increasing enforcement of mandated programs, such as the newsprint and plastic trash bag minimum content programs and the rigid plastic packaging container program.
• Streamlining and improving services provided by the RMDZ program.
• Developing new information sources, such as its Web-accessible database of RCPs that contains information on more than 1,000 manufacturers and several thousand products.

Through all of these and related efforts, the IWMB has used its resources to help form and support alliances with private industry, local government, and other stakeholders to overcome barriers to increased demand for RCPs.