Program History

ILSR's Waste to Wealth program has helped communities across the country create policies and practices that simultaneously address citizens' environmental concerns and economic needs. Our early work illustrated the environmental and economic benefits of recycling. In cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, we helped citizens fight the incinerators and landfills that polluted their air and water, attracted rodents, and drove down property prices in the predominantly low-income and minority areas where waste facilities traditionally are sited. We conducted research, and provided officials with data that demonstrated how recycling reduces the need for these waste disposal facilities, and reduces waste management costs. As processing and remanufacturing techniques advanced, ILSR articulated - and, through pilot projects, demonstrated - the economic benefits of a "closed-loop" system. Then we put theory to practice, helping communities attract "end-users," pioneering innovative business structures such as joint ventures between entrepreneurs and community development organizations (CDOs), so that commercial growth benefits not just the home office, but the hometown.

From coast to coast, our projects have yielded dramatic results. In South Central and East Los Angeles, ILSR helped establish mandatory recycling programs that helped the city reach its 46% recovery goal, reduce program costs, and create hundreds of new jobs. From Baltimore to Atlanta, ILSR helped establish Empowerment and Enterprise Zones and worked with CDOs and local activists to create and sustain successful enterprises that employ dozens of local residents. ILSR projects have placed hundreds of workers in family-wage and union-track jobs and created or expanded nearly a dozen community-based and minority-owned companies.

The Waste to Wealth program continues to expand, working with old colleagues and new friends to address timely issues relating to environmental sustainability and local economic growth. Some of our services include:

Conducting Technology Assessments: Identifying and evaluating environmentally sound businesses and technologies such as processors, deconstruction service companies, remanufacturers, reuse/resale operations, and composting companies.

1. Sustaining Businesses & Jobs through Pallet Reuse and Repair

Designing Model Waste Management Programs: Assessing a community's needs, evaluating its existing program, and recommending specific measures and resources to help reduce waste generation and disposal, increase recycling, reduce waste management costs, and create a supply of materials for remanufacture.

1. Del Norte Zero Waste Plan
2. Hong Kong Report executive summary

Drafting Case Studies: Documenting innovative, cost-effective public and private sector waste reduction programs that boast high recycling rates.

1. Building Savings: Strategies for Waste Reduction of Construction & Demolition Debris from Buildings
2. Alameda County Report, Innovation, Leadership, Stewardship
3. Cutting the Waste Stream in Half: Community Record-Setters Show How
4. Creating Wealth from Everyday Items
5. Plug into Electronics Reuse
6. Weaving Textile Reuse into Waste Reduction

Evaluating State-of-the-Art Policies: Researching, evaluating, and recommending policies that increase the supply and demand of recycled materials and that help close the loop locally, e.g., mandatory recycling ordinances, pay-as-you-throw trash fees, procurement guidelines, extended producer responsibility initiatives, minimum recycled-content product legislation, and joint-venture strategies.

1. Policies to Promote Refillable Beverage Containers
2. Local Initiatives that Leverage Extended Producer Responsibility
3. Policies to Revive Beverage Container Refilling in the U.S.

Advocacy and Outreach: Working with local organizations, agencies, and businesses to identify and implement projects and policies that help turn discards into dollars. ILSR also offers expert testimony at public hearings, and provides workshops on issues from energy efficiency to environmental justice to enterprise development.