As a founder and Past President of the National Recycling Coalition, I believe we need a clear national voice of recycling that is unencumbered by other priorities. Although Keep America Beautiful, its affiliates and legions of volunteers have done good work, they were not organized to focus on recycling. They have not demonstrated any interest in advancing national and state policies needed to reduce, reuse and recycle more. NRC has.

NRC first adopted a National Policy on Recycling in 1986. It followed through the late 1980s and early 1990s to develop cutting edge policies to advance recycling nationally and in states throughout the nation. As a result of their policy leadership, many states were able to adopt those cutting edge policies recommended by NRC, and demonstrate how important they were. In the early 1990s, the NRC got an EPA grant to convene the National Recycling Advisory Council (RAC), with a blue ribbon panel of the highest echelon in America, including Governor Jim Florio of New Jersey, Vice President Al Gore, Councilwoman Judy Stabile from San Jose and other top elected and corporate leaders from throughout the nation. During its tenure, the RAC convened many workshops, meetings and research efforts to look into what it would take to expand the recycling industry even further. That was at the time that some (e.g., Winston Porter) were calling for a "rollback" of state recycling goals of 35% and 50% of being impractical and impossible to achieve. By having the credibility of the NRC and RAC behind us, recyclers around the country were able to withstand that first assault on the dramatic progress we had made in the 1990s.

It's time for another sea change in policies in America. Now we MUST address Climate Change as a real issue. And we're in the greatest economic downturn of our lifetimes. Now is the time that recyclers should be united in their voices and actively pursuing policies that highlight more recycling and wasting less is a key to addressing both Climate Change and obtaining good green jobs.

Is KAB designed to address those challenges? I think not.

Let's take this opportunity to breathe new life into the vision of the NRC we had when we started. Where all voices are heard, and deals are not done in the backroom. Where the merits of our messages are what carries the day, not how much money we've contributed.

There are options for NRC. We can declare Chapter 11 (not Chapter 7) and reorganize NRC debts and address them responsibly, instead of walking away from them, which is what the current Board says they will do if NRC members vote No. We can operate without staff and contract out all services, like most state recycling organizations do. Already Jerry Powell has said he wants to organize a National Recycling Conference. Why do we have to pay for that overhead in DC if Jerry will do it? And we can use this opportunity to build a new way of bringing All Recycling Organizations to the table, not just a select few willing to pay high fees to the NRC. A New Recycling Organizations of North America has just been formed, and can help fashion that aspect of the new Coalition.

It's time to VOTE NO on KAB Takeover of the NRC. Let's build bridges to the future, not just throw in the towel.

Gary Liss
gary@garyliss.com
www.garyliss.com