While waste reduction can begin at any level, it seems to have caught hold best in manufacturing. Manufacture of more durable goods, improved repair and repairability of existing products, and less wasteful packaging can all help reduce the waste stream. While waste reduction is an approach that requires corporate policies or regulations to be effective, consumer demand for more environmentally sensitive products is a major force. And many manufacturers have found out that they can actually save money by reducing waste. Many communities are now employing recycling to further reduce waste volumes that must be handled.
Recycling collects reusable material from the waste stream.
The recycled material then becomes a commodity used in manufacturing new products. For some materials, such as newsprint and other paper, glass, aluminum, and some plastics, good markets already exist around the country. For other materials, such as magazines, few markets exist but efforts to improve product marketability are growing. As markets for materials have improved, recycling is expanding rapidly. Much organic waste that is not recycled contains value that further processing can capture.