As part of many companies environmental and sustainability goals, reducing waste and increasing recycling often go hand-in-hand. Tracking both, the overall quantity of each category as well as their relative ratio compared to each other can help identify opportunities and quantify improvement efforts. In the prioritization of waste/byproduct management between the three sustainable options of Reduce-Reuse-Recycle, you will find that the first two will help drive down the overall quantity of waste which should be all company’s primary goal. The secondary goal is your recycling efforts for what remains in the hope that a 3^rd party recycling management company and end customer can manufacture a new material for the open market.

For identifying recycling opportunities, everything starts with making a proper waste determination on if a byproduct is truly recyclable or if it presents no current open market value and is still considered trash. The awareness of what can be included in your company’s recycling containers can come down to administrative controls like posters, however this can lead to a variety of results depending on the company culture and the convenience of the trash vs recycling option. A way to increase the “effective” recycling rate is to think about other forms of controls that may act as an additional reminder of what can be recycled or receptacle designs.

In company lunch/break rooms, liquid beverage containers like water and soda cans/bottles are likely the most common byproducts vs copy paper and cardboard. So using this example, a more effective poster or awareness campaign in this area might highlight these byproducts over ones that are less or uncommon. An additional control to utilize in these areas is to have clearly identified, and different disposal container designs for trash vs recycled containers. Trash containers may have wide openings whereas some recycling containers may have smaller and shape specific openings that reinforces the intended byproduct. A circular opening slightly larger than can or bottle could be enough to remind someone that its not to be used for a dirty paper plate. A narrow slot opening might similarly act as a reminder for copy paper. While many disposal companies do not mind these byproducts from being collected in a single stream recycling program, using a more open container cover design may start to resemble the openness of a trash container that is often nearby and lead to cross contamination. These now mixed collection containers may result in additional fees or give a company a false sense of how effective the recycling program is and the metrics they track.

Other common pitfalls of recycling can be from placing materials that appear to be recyclable, but may not be, or at least to the disposal vendor you use.  Below is a table with a few examples of the plastic types commonly recycled and what they can be recycled as. Using a list like this, your company can evaluate what waste byproducts are disposed of and if they can be recycled. Additionally, these lists can be used to evaluate if anything your company creates or uses as shipping material will ultimately qualify as a recycled byproduct to the end user when considering a lifecycle perspective. An example of this could be when comparing shipping and container wraps with some materials having more recycling opportunities at the end-of-life than others. It’s also worth mentioning that some less desirable plastics when generated in larger quantities may become more desirable when accumulated in separate containers. An example of this could include supersacks (#6-PP) which are commonly used to deliver bulk raw materials but could get generated in great enough quantity to warrant exploring a separate recycling vendor than ones that collect the more common plastic/recycling materials.

***Widely accepted recycled plastic
**Limited/specialize recycling
*No recycling

A company should also evaluate and strategize around not using a trash bag to collect these recyclable items and place into a dumpster. While easier to handle, using trash bags may incur additional fees from recycling vendors and may prevent some unintended side effects if not also planning for. Some of these side effects could include hygiene and ergonomics for employees/janitors or housekeeping/stormwater issues from loose material not making it into the recycling dumpster from both weather or handling issues.

At the recycling processing facilities, a combination of manual and mechanical methods are used to sort the mixed recycled materials to prepare them for sale to a final recycling customer. Manual methods are often employees on the first and last stages of sorting to remove obvious non-recycling materials initially as well as in the final inspection that might remove unique materials that the end recycling customer would not want either. Some of the mechanical technologies that recycling companies use include screens (sort by size), magnets (metallic items), air currents (separate heavier from light weight items), eddy currents (creates an electric charge to pull/push items), and optical sorters (scan for common container sizes, but different materials). Recycled byproducts that sometimes end up becoming landfilled can include containers that contain more than a small residual of the original contents or those that are not easy to separate with the disposal companies sorting technologies. For example, if a water bottle for instance contains too much liquid, an air current will see this as being too heavy compared to an empty bottle and potentially reject the water bottle. Another sorting challenge is when multiple recycling byproducts are stuck together, such as when a plastic cap is attached to a glass container or when something like tape or an adhesive prevents things from being easily separated. The ability for different byproducts to be easily separated is also why most recycling companies require that everything needs to be lose and not in a trash bag (#5 plastic LDPE) as mentioned above. It is estimated that around that 10% of recycled material ends up in a landfill due to these various sorting issues.

In summary, a combination of factors needs to be considered when establishing and maintaining an effective recycling program at your company. Having a clear understanding of the byproducts that are generated and the expectations of what your recycling vendors can process will help establish the basics and then from there additional awareness, controls, auditing, and metrics will be needed to drive improvement to your end goal of minimizing materials sent to a landfill.

Curtis Veit
Senior Environmental Engineer
Waupaca Foundry inc.

On March 4, 2025, Justice Alito delivered the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in City and County of San Francisco, California v. EPA, holding that EPA exceeded its authority by including “end-result” provisions in pollutant discharge permits issued pursuant to the Clean Water Act. “End-result” provisions generally prohibit permit recipients from contributing to water pollution without specifying actions or objectively defined effluent limits that the permittee must meet to comply with the Clean Water Act. SCOTUS held that EPA may not establish permit requirements that simply prohibit discharges that contribute to a violation of a water quality standard. Rather, EPA must affirmatively define in the permit what steps are required or what limitation must be met by a permittee to prevent such a violation in a receiving body of water.

As background, the Clean Water Act prohibits point source discharges to a body of water subject to the Act’s jurisdiction without a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Permit. NPDES permits generally establish “effluent limitations” restricting the mass or concentration of a pollutant that can be discharged into the receiving waterbody, or specifying an operational practice standard or control technology that must be implemented by the permittee.

In San Francisco, a municipal wastewater treatment facility operated a combined sewer system, where wastewater and stormwater are combined for treatment. Heavy precipitation occasionally caused system overflows, causing the discharge of untreated wastewater. When the City renewed its NPDES permit in 2019, the EPA-issued permit included two new “end-result” requirements. One prohibited the facility from “contribut[ing] to a violation of any applicable water quality standard” for the water where the discharge is received. The second prohibited the facility from contributing to the degradation of any receiving body of water. Notably, the permit did not expressly specify how the City could meet these requirements, effectively holding the municipality strictly liable for the water quality into which it discharged pollutants.

SCOTUS held that EPA exceeded its regulatory authority in requiring such “end-result” provisions based on the larger statutory scheme of the Clean Water Act. The Court held that allowing “end-result” limitations would effectively negate the “permit shield” included in NPDES permits. The permit shield provides that a permittee is deemed in compliance with the Clean Water Act and shielded from enforcement so longs as it complies with its NPDES permit terms. “End-result” permit terms would render the permit shield moot since they lack objective criteria and specific directives by which a permit recipient would know if they were in compliance with the permit.

The Court further held that “end-result” permit terms make it virtually impossible to allocate responsibility for water quality standards in situations involving multiple dischargers to the same receiving water body. Each permittee with an “end-result” limitation could be held strictly liability for any violation of a water quality standard in the receiving water body, even if caused by another discharger.

Going forward, EPA- and state-issued pollution discharge permits will need to include specific effluent limits, best management or operational practices, and/or effluent control technologies in permits rather than imposing general outcome-based goals.

This decision will also impact other regulatory programs, including the Clean Air Act. Clean Air Act permits often contain similar “end-result” provisions, preventing permit recipients from significantly contributing to an exceedance of an ambient air standard or otherwise causing “air pollution.” See e.g., Wis. Admin. Code § NR 415.03. These general air permit directives provide no guidance or specific actions that the permittee must undertake to comply with this type of aspirational “end-result” permit term. The SCOTUS holding in San Francisco seems to squarely prohibit these types of limitation in air permits as well.

Permittees are advised to check their permits for such “end-result” language and consult legal counsel for an analysis in light of the decision and potentially applicable underlying state law.

Allison Hawkins, Dave Crass, and Todd Palmer

Michael Best

On August 30, 2024, EPA finalized amendments for the approval of combustion engine rule revisions for reciprocating internal combustion engines (RICE), compression ignition (CI) internal combustion engines (ICE), and spark ignition (SI) ICE. The addition of electronic reporting provisions will provide for simplified reporting by sources and enhance availability of data on sources to the EPA and the public. EPA has provided guidance on the electronic reporting process in CEDRI and the information with which operators of stationary engines will need to become familiar. The compliance date for the electronic reporting requirements is February 26, 2025.

Information on CEDRI can be found here: https://www.epa.gov/electronic-reporting-air-emissions/cedri

For more information visit https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/08/30/2024-18766/national-emission-standards-for-hazardous-air-pollutants-reciprocating-internal-combustion-engines

• 60.4214 What are my notification, reporting, and recordkeeping requirements if I am an owner or operator of a stationary CI internal combustion engine? https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-40/chapter-I/subchapter-C/part-60/subpart-IIII/subject-group-ECFR52c86ee6d0200fc/section-60.4214

On January 21 and 22, 2025, FET will hold two half day webinars covering air emissions reporting updates as well as compliance reminders and issues impacting air permits.   There are a number of critical air regulatory changes coming in 2025 and this webinar will give you information to help your facility react and comply.   There are only a few changes to the air emissions inventory reporting system, but facilities with emissions regulated under NR 445, the hazardous air contaminants rule, will see the biggest changes.  In addition, there are some items to be aware of in regards to the stack data entered in the system.  The emissions inventory section of the webinar will discuss how to best be prepared to ensure accurate data is entered for your facility in the reporting system.

With respect to air permit impacts, some of Wisconsin’s areas currently designated as Moderate Nonattainment for ozone will soon be redesignated as Serious Nonattainment by US Environmental Protection Agency.  When the redesignation is finalized, the threshold for major sources is reduced and facilities in those nonattainment areas will need to review their permit status and determine if changes are needed in order to maintain compliance.  Facilities covered by a permit that restricts emissions below the major source level may need to comply with and request lower limits or apply for a different permit.  In addition, major sources that want to construct will be limited to a smaller allowable increase or will need to obtain offsets and apply LAER.    DNR staff will speak at the webinar on when these redesignations will occur and how to proceed with submitting new permit applications.  Other air permit topics covered include permit exemption options and ensuring complete renewal applications as well as federal enforcement and regulatory updates.

Register for the Annual Air Reporting Update webinar through our upcoming events page!

This is a proposed extension of the ICR, which is currently approved through January 31, 2025. Public comments were previously requested via the Federal Register on May 13, 2024, during a 60-day comment period. This notice allows for an additional 30 days for public comments.

Section 3004 of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), as amended, requires the EPA to develop standards for hazardous waste treatment, storage, and disposal facilities (TSDFs) as may be necessary to protect human health and the environment. Subsections 3004(a)(1), (3), (4), (5), and (6) specify that these standards include, but not be limited to, the following requirements:

• Maintaining records of all hazardous wastes identified or listed under subtitle C that are treated, stored, or disposed of, and the manner in which such wastes were treated, stored, or disposed of;
• Operating methods, techniques, and practices for treatment, storage, or disposal of hazardous waste;
• Location, design, and construction of such hazardous waste treatment, disposal, or storage facilities;
• Contingency plans for effective action to minimize unanticipated damage from any treatment, storage, or disposal of any such hazardous waste; and
• Maintaining or operating such facilities and requiring such additional qualifications as to ownership, continuity of operation, training for personnel, and financial responsibility as may be necessary or desirable.

Comments may be submitted on or before December 23, 2024.

For more information, visit https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/11/21/2024-27308/information-collection-request-submitted-to-omb-for-review-and-approval-comment-request-general

The A&WMA Lake Michigan States Section is pleased to once again offer the Midwest’s most comprehensive annual program on air quality management issues. Conference attendees will hear from senior Federal, State and local representatives on developing regulatory and enforcement initiatives. There will also be a discussion of the recent United States Supreme Court decisions impacting administrative law, and you will also hear from government, industry and consultant representatives on the latest developments in air permitting. The annual air conference will be headlined by a keynote from J.C. Kibbey, Illinois’ Climate Advisor, to discuss the recent federal award of over $430 million to the State of Illinois through the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant Program under the Inflation Reduction Act.

Wisconsin businesses aiming to enhance their sustainability initiatives and gain recognition for their efforts have until September 30^th to apply for recognition in Wisconsin Sustainable Business Council’s (WSBC) Green Masters Program®. This program offers a strategic framework for organizations to define and prioritize sustainability initiatives that add business value.

For more information or to learn how your organization can participate, please visit www.wisconsinsustainability.com or contact Christa Kananen, Program Manager, at Christa@wisconsinsustainability.com.

OSHA has amended the Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) with regard to aerosol can classification. The agency has determined that the revisions in this final rule will enhance the effectiveness of the HCS by ensuring employees are appropriately apprised of the chemical hazards to which they may be exposed, thus reducing the incidence of chemical-related occupational illnesses and injuries. The modifications to the standard include revised criteria for classification of certain health and physical hazards, revised provisions for updating labels, new labeling provisions for small containers, new provisions related to trade secrets, technical amendments related to the contents of safety data sheets (SDSs), and related revisions to definitions of terms used in the standard. This final rule is effective July 19, 2024.  Additional information.