|
An RR park enables the public to:
- Reduce the amount of wastes requiring payment for disposal.
- Recover some value from the sale of valuable materials in a "one-stop
service center" for reuse, recycling, and composting.
- Buy other items of value from reuse, recycling, compost, and
recycled-content retail stores.
The public will enjoy coming to these facilities not only to dispose of their
materials, but also to find unique items of value to them at bargain prices. For
some families, RR parks can turn the chore of waste disposal into a fun family
outing, with something for everyone in the family.
An RR park enables the participating businesses to share:
- Space (including warehousing).
- Operating equipment (e.g., forklifts, balers, shredders, wheel loaders and
trucks).
- Preventive maintenance and repair services.
- Pollution control equipment and services.
- Facilities (e.g., maintenance yard, truck washing area, conference rooms,
kitchen/break room, showers, and bathrooms).
- Management and technical expertise.
- Accounting, legal, and insurance services.
- Promotions and advertising costs.
- Government affairs and permitting services; administrative and clerical
support services.
- Communications equipment and services (e.g., copiers, computers, internet
access, Web sites, fax, radios, and phones).
- Staff recruitment and job training services.
- Restaurant/snack bar for park businesses and customers.
- Educational facilities and services (e.g., a nature trail, demonstrations
of the use of different compost products in gardens and landscaping, on-site
composting bins for residents and businesses, demonstrations of recycled
building products in use and/or an environmental education display/museum.
An RR park also helps participating businesses by matching wastes from one
company to the resource needs of another. An RR park is an innovative,
supportive, and fertile ground for new ideas on how to expand reuse, recycling,
and composting in an area. RR parks could even simplify the expansion or start
of new recycling services by developing and getting approval in advance for a
master environmental impact report to cover most anticipated park activities.
Potential companies that might locate in an RR park include:
Reuse: Drop-off or buyback center, salvage, repair, rehabilitation,
refinish, rent, restoration, food banks, and retail sales for reuse items.
These could include white goods (washers, dryers, refrigerators), brown goods
(e.g., computers, TVs, electronics, and other small appliances), furniture,
clothing, and latex paint. Companies might include: an electronics repair
shop, a household appliance store, a reused furniture store, vintage clothing
and consignment shop, a household item thrift shop, a stove and porcelain
refinisher, an antique restoration firm, and an eco-artist.
Recycling: Drop-off, buyback, curbside collection and manufacturing
facilities for recyclable materials including paper, containers (glass,
plastic and metal), textiles, scrap metals, plastics and tires.
Organics: Collection and processing services for yard trimmings,
food scraps, food-contaminated paper, wood, soils, and other putrescibles.
C&D: Businesses collecting and processing construction and
demolition (C&D) debris, deconstruction or dismantling, used building
materials (e.g., scrap lumber, doors, windows, plumbing fixtures, and
ceramics), concrete and asphalt recycling, and processors of roofing
materials, bricks, and mixed demolition debris.
An RR park puts reuse first, recycling second, composting third, and wasting
last. Each business will need to provide a small waste handling and transfer
capacity. The more effectively residents are trained to use the new system, the
less waste will be left to handle at the end of the process.
Within an RR park, the market should determine the details of where, how, and
to whom materials move. Source separation principles should govern, along with
convenience, cleanliness, and satisfying the customer. The greater the amount of
materials separated into discrete subflows, the greater the income. As the RR
park succeeds in its mission to attract and nurture businesses that add value to
discarded materials, the number and variety of such businesses can and will
grow.
RR parks should allow room for many small operators. Clustering small with
large operators is a well-proven commercial principle, as any visit to a mall
will attest. There, specialized vendors of all sizes meet to offer wares and
services to crowds of customers. If run as isolated businesses, most of these
enterprises would fail. But within the managed competition and cooperation of
the mall environment, they thrive.
The same forces drive RR parks. Companies will become suppliers to one
another to:
- Decrease their disposal costs.
- Increase their cash flow.
- Build friendly networks in anticipation of beneficial trades to come.
Businesses will exchanges information and learn from one another the latest
and most advantageous techniques. The combined operation will attract more
trade, creating new niches for support businesses. The emerging business
ecosystem will feed on resource flows from the larger economy, adjust to surges
and droughts, and foster waste prevention.
In addition, reuse and recycling businesses in the RR park could share:
- Knowledge and technology (networking among park tenants on how to address
technical problems).
- Showrooms for retail and consignment sales and temporary staffing support
(including training area for new staff and for tours).
RR Park Amenities
In order to make an RR park a destination point for residents and
businesses, parks could include a variety of amenities. There could be many
reasons why residents and businesses would want to come to the park. In planning
an RR park, space could be set aside for some of these activities, even if they
are not able to be built as part of the initial stages of the park’s
development.
Some of these improvements could be built as tenants locate in the park.
Other of these improvements could be built as grants and other funding become
available over time. Funding for these amenities could come from solid waste or
other funding sources. For example, a parks and recreation department could
provide funding for a playground or small amphitheater. Including other
government departments in the planning process would encourage them to keep the
RR park in mind for funding and new programs.
Park amenities could include:
Nature Walk. Create pathways, interpretive and warning signs, and
viewing platforms near points of interest built from
reused/recycled/compost-content products.
Children’s Playground. Include playground equipment, surface
finish, and fencing built from reused/recycled/compost-content products.
Amphitheater. Build a small outdoor amphitheater for summer arts and
nature programs (like Recycletown in Sonoma County).
Demonstration Sites. Allocate space for production and use of
compost, native plants, and integrated pest management to conserve water and
decrease wasting. This could be located on either side of a pathway leading to
the main entrance of an RR park.
Artist in Residence and Displays. Provide workspace for artist(s) in
residence who could assist all park businesses in creative design. Art from
scrap and recycled products could be prominently displayed throughout the
park.
Classroom. Provide classroom to host recycling and community
programs, including master composter or master gardener training, commercial
auditor training, recycled art classes, or nature interpretive courses.
Showroom. Develop room to showcase products manufactured and
remanufactured at this site, and for other reuse/recycled-content
manufacturers in the area. Products would be available for sale from the
showroom and guides would be available to other resale/stores to purchase
other merchandise. If there is an artist in residence program, the artist’s
workplace could be part of the showroom to highlight how products are made.
The showroom could also include temporary displays (e.g., children’s
environmental theme projects).
Environmental Education Display/Museum. Provide environmental
displays and/or an environmental education museum to attract families to
attend.
Incubator. An incubator for new recycling businesses could provide a
lower cost location for such businesses to grow and prosper. Different types
of incubators could be developed, depending on local needs and resources.
Graduating incubator: Start-up businesses share resources among other
start-ups. These services could include conference rooms, copiers and faxes,
receptionists, bookkeeping, and business technical assistance (e.g., review of
business and marketing plans). The goal of the incubator is to support
businesses until they are strong enough to move to their own location.
Non-graduating incubator: The management organization supports the
start-ups until they are strong enough financially to purchase the facility
and become fully independent. In this model a single business could be the
incubator, or several businesses could pool their resources to jointly own the
facility. Successful businesses could stay in the park, with new businesses
accommodated in locations adjacent to the initial incubator facility. Some of
the shared services (e.g. restaurant, showroom) could be moved to adjacent
buildings.
Public/Private Roles Developing RR Parks
The public and private sectors, and nonprofit organizations, can play
different roles in developing RR parks. The public sector could:
- Buy land and buildings for the park, obtain permits for the park, and
lease space to tenants (with possible option to buy).
- Adopt policy and encourage a private investor or nonprofit organization to
develop the park.
- Establish a new nonprofit organization to develop and manage the park,
with the board of directors possibly including all businesses in the park.
- Establish a cooperative to develop and manage the park.
- Pursue a combination of the above as a public/private partnership.
Public Roles in Support of RR Parks
Public agencies can play an active role in the development of an RR park.
They could:
- Identify sites for an RR park.
- Contract with a business to run the RR park. Skills in marketing,
management, real estate leases, recruitment of businesses, and community
relations will all be essential for a successful project.
- Participate in operations functions such as: scalehouse/gatekeeper, park
manager, retail stores, and administration. Rental income and a portion of
the sales tax revenue derived from the sale of items at the park could be
used to cover the costs of park management.
- Provide grants and loans and other financing assistance.
- Educate lending institutions and other financing sources to business
development opportunities and the needs of recycling-related businesses.
- Use Community Reinvestment Act policies to encourage investment in these
projects.
- Provide management services and act as a central point for business
attraction.
- Assist in marketing for the park.
- Provide public lands (e.g., former military bases and brownfields).
- Provide initial rent supports.
- Provide technical assistance in the form of business and marketing plan
review.
- Provide bookkeeping and tax advice (possibly through a contract with a CPA
or small business consultant).
- Subsidize the cost of collection and disposal of garbage illegally dumped
at the gates of the park after regular business hours.
- Organize promotional events and fairs at the park to introduce the park to
the community.
- Coordinate fast-track permitting processes.
- Prepare a master development plan for the entire project.
- Prepare a complete environmental assessment of the entire project pursuant
to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
- Hire a permit coordinator to assist developers through the development
review process.
- Provide fast-track plan checking and permit processing through engineering
departments.
- Waiving permitting and development fees.
- Assist in obtaining long-term commitments of feedstocks.
Options for Developing RR Parks
RR parks are developing in California in the following ways:
- Master planning and zoning available land for an RR park as part of a
comprehensive economic development strategy (e.g., Cabazon Resource Recovery
Park, see page 10).
- Siting of multiple reuse, recycling, and composting businesses around a
landfill or transfer station (e.g., Monterey Regional Environmental Park and
Davis Street Transfer Station in San Leandro).
- Renovating abandoned buildings (e.g., Urban Ore in Berkeley and proposed
projects for Del Norte County).
- Copromoting of nearby reuse, recycling, and composting businesses (e.g.,
Berkeley "serial MRF").
In addition, two other scenarios are possible:
- Rebuilding of "brownfield" sites.
- Zoning of areas or districts within a community specifically for these
types of businesses.
- Development as part of "eco-industrial parks" in response to
general communitywide efforts to advance "sustainable development."
Several of these are highlighted in the case
studies that follow.
Table of Contents | Innovations
Home | Library Home
|
