Sixty-two percent of America’s states and the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam have legalized medical marijuana use, and the number of people using marijuana in the United States is rising rapidly. As a Schedule I narcotic under the federal Controlled Substances Act, marijuana is still illegal, but its widespread use by workers and potential employees poses significant legal and practical issues for employers.
In addition to increased use and acceptance of marijuana, the drug is now more potent (almost double the active ingredient THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol) and has greater impact, lasting a longer time. No reliable metric is available for determining when a particular level of THC impairs the user and for how long, but studies show that it stays in the body much longer than alcohol; the duration of impairment could be more than 24 hours.
Recycling companies have always made safety a priority. With marijuana legalization, they face new concerns: how employees’ occasional or regular use of marijuana impacts the workplace and whether the effects are linked to job accidents and injuries. Short-term effects of THC can include impaired body movement, difficulty thinking and problem-solving, memory issues and an altered sense of time, all of which could be detrimental to workplace safety.
Legal implications
The legal landscape is hard to define because most states are still defining regulations regarding marijuana sales, production and use. In states where the consumption of cannabis is legal, the courts’ opinion of applicable employment law and the responsibilities of employers related to employees’ marijuana use vary greatly. For recycling company owners and managers, it is a confusing landscape indeed, but one that cannot be ignored.
Previously, the courts typically agreed with employers that didn’t want to hire marijuana users, citing that it was illegal under federal law. As of late October 2018, nine states specifically ban employment discrimination against medical pot users. Other state courts have ruled that employers may take action against an employee who has tested positive under the employers’ substance abuse policy. However, in three states, a positive drug test alone does not indicate impairment and cannot be used as the sole reason for disciplinary action.
While companies may use the federal Drug-Free Workplace Act (DFWA) as guidance for pre- and postemployment drug testing, DFWA does not require employers to conduct drug testing or to fire employees who test positive for marijuana. DFWA doesn’t provide meaningful guidance on medical marijuana use, and clarity is lacking around the use of drug test results.
To further the confusion, the U.S. Department of Justice allows states to enforce narcotics laws that are considered “outside federal priorities.” This allows states to enforce marijuana laws as they wish. While the drug is not considered for accommodation under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, controversy surrounds the issue of accommodation for employees who are prescribed medical marijuana.
Because of the variances among the states and few standards for enforcement, recycling companies in states with medical marijuana laws should be familiar with protections for employees and potential hires.
Whether to drug test
Recycling companies that regularly use drug testing services are likely reporting higher numbers of positive tests for marijuana in pre- and postemployment drug screens.
State laws legalizing marijuana do not completely protect employees who are under the influence while at work. The type of work being performed is an important factor. Equally important are state laws that affect how and when drug tests are conducted, the use of the test to determine impairment and the actions an employer can take.
Owners and managers should consider these questions when determining their drug testing policies:
What is state employment law concerning current and potential employees who have a medical marijuana prescription? You do not want to have the appearance of discrimination by denying a job to someone who may be protected in states that have legalized marijuana. However, because legislation regarding employer policies varies from state to state, there is no one-size-fits-all rule. Company owners, managers and HR staff must be aware of changes to employment law.
Are your company’s jobs safety-sensitive? Are positions federally regulated? If your business uses truck drivers who are regulated by the U.S. Department of Transportation, you are likely required to test for all illegal drugs. If the job requires working around balers or shredders or operating mobile material handling equipment, it would be in your best interest to test for impairment, even if marijuana is legal within the state.
Do you want to continue to perform drug tests? Recently, employers have moved to exclude marijuana from mandatory drug testing because of the lack of clear guidelines on what constitutes impairment and tight applicant pools. Employers should determine if jobs require drug testing. Companies should review their procedures and determine which approach is best under their states’ laws.
Has your substance abuse policy been reviewed to ensure it is still appropriate for your business and employment situation? State laws legalizing marijuana use do not require employers to compromise workplace safety. Employers should make sure their policies reflect the steps that need to be taken to meet their obligations to consider employee rights while guarding workplace safety. Your guidelines, stated in the employee handbook and in the company’s substance abuse policy, will help employees and supervisors understand that state law might not protect them from consequences of being impaired on the job.
The author is a certified executive coach who also has held HR and management roles. She reminds readers the effects of marijuana use on workplace safety are being defined and encourages them to explore more resources. Contact her at mbd1945@aol.com.
The trade war between the U.S. and China and the tariffs that were enacted as a result injected a great deal of uncertainty into the recycling industry in 2018. That uncertainty was further compounded by changing scrap import procedures and policies in China that affected the global flow of scrap. For U.S. recyclers, new domestic and overseas markets had to be sought, which sometimes meant careening along steep learning curves.
But U.S. recyclers are learning to adapt to what has become their new reality. This process of adaptation is not new to the recycling sector; it is just the most recent chapter in the ongoing story of the industry’s resiliency.
The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), Washington, has helped to illustrate that resiliency over the years in its annual “Recycling Industry Yearbook.” This annual publication is designed to provide the most up-to-date information and statistics about the U.S. recycling industry and global scrap marketplace.
“This process of adaptation is not new to the recycling sector; it is just the most recent chapter in the ongoing story of the industry’s resiliency.”
“With a greater spotlight on the industry in the wake of rising trade protectionism around the globe, the publication provides the most comprehensive analysis of where the industry stands based on the most current data compared to previous years,” ISRI states in a news release announcing the most recent edition of the “Recycling Industry Yearbook.” The 2018 edition of the yearbook provides figures for 2017, before the U.S. introduced Section 232 tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum into the U.S. and Section 301 tariffs on Chinese goods, prompting China to introduce retaliatory tariffs, and before China began banning imports of certain scrap materials.
In that news release, ISRI Chief Economist Joe Pickard says, “The scrap marketplace has become increasingly global in recent decades, and the United States is the largest exporter of recycled commodities in the world. China’s rapid economic expansion was the most important driver of the swift expansion of the global scrap market, but market conditions in China are changing today given China’s rising domestic supply of scrap, investment in scrap processing and import restrictions. But as we show in the 2018 yearbook, scrap recyclers remain extremely responsive to changing market conditions and are focused on producing consistently high-quality scrap commodities to meet consumer demands at home and abroad.”
According to the yearbook, preliminary data show exports of all scrap commodities from around the world were valued at approximately $105 billion in 2017. Since 2000, net exports of U.S. scrap have made a positive contribution to the U.S. trade balance, amounting to more than $235 billion. Major export destinations for U.S. scrap in 2017 included China ($5.6 billion), Canada ($2.1 billion), Mexico ($1.1 billion), Turkey ($1 billion), India ($923 million), Germany ($910 million) and South Korea ($778 million).
It will be interesting to see how these figures change in 2018 based on China’s scrap import policies and U.S. recyclers’ ability to adapt to changing market conditions.
Harmonized recycling
Features - Cover Story
Simplified communication decreases contamination and confusion among residents while increasing the capture rate for curbside recyclables.
Imagine trying to take a train, subway or bus system across a city where the signage, names and colors of the routes are inconsistent. It would be difficult. But that’s how many communities approach recycling education.
Random instructions here and there won’t result in consistent behavior among residents. Instead, municipal recycling programs must offer harmonized and simplified communication across the board to be assured of consistent outcomes.
Harmonizing means bringing into consonance or accord. In municipal recycling, it means material recovery facilities (MRFs) and other stakeholders work together to provide clear, consistent messaging that can effectively change residents’ recycling behaviors.
Get synchronized
Recycling messages need to be the same at work, home and play, regardless of political or geographic boundaries.
When MRF operators and other stakeholders work together to create educational messaging about recycling that is synchronized across these areas, beautiful things happen: Contamination is reduced and the capture rate increases. But having synchronized messaging doesn’t necessarily mean that all stakeholders must have identical educational approaches or perfectly matching “acceptable materials” lists; that’s not practical. Rather, all stakeholders should collaborate to keep their messages coordinated.
One example of harmonized messaging is offering a singular message that’s presented in a variety of ways. For instance, multiple media could be used to deliver the message that plastic bags aren’t acceptable in the recycling stream, be it through videos, infographics or blogs. Another example of harmonized messaging is having a variety of messages presented in a singular way, such as using one video series to highlight all the items that aren’t acceptable in a recycling stream.
In both examples, the secret to success is following a predictable pattern so viewers begin to recognize the overarching recycling message and remember it.
Easy as 1-2-3
Across the United States, many MRF operators and the municipalities they serve are collaborating on recycling education by attending workshops on delivering more consistent messaging.
The following three steps can help guide MRFs and municipal recycling stakeholders in harmonizing their messages to ensure they are clear and concise.
Step 1: Harmonization begins with a variety of people, generally recycling program managers and educational staff from communities throughout the same MRFshed, who are willing to design and develop a synchronized recycling message. (The Recycling Partnership, Falls Church, Virginia, defines a MRFshed as a group of communities that funnel material into the same MRF). Joining forces as a group allows programs to leverage dollars and reach, which will help to spread the message to a larger audience.
Step 2: After the stakeholders have been identified, the next step is to invite them to visit the local MRF. This will allow everyone involved to see what material is acceptable and enable them to identify the top contaminants that are in the recycling stream.
This second step isn’t intended to supersede existing agreements. Instead, it should be used to refocus messaging on the most detrimental materials. This is not the forum to determine what materials should be “in” or “out” of the recycling stream. This is the start of a long-term strategy to align communities in their messaging.
Often, a community’s list of acceptable materials is outdated. For instance, if millennial residents see that “phone books” are acceptable in the recycling stream, they might be unsure of what that means. It might be time to update that item—and others—on the acceptable list.
Conflicting messages also are problematic. For example, a county might communicate that “no pizza boxes” are allowed in the recycling stream, while a city in that same county includes pizza boxes on its acceptable list. Then, the community’s MRF operator might add that pizza boxes are a concern, but plastic bags are an even bigger concern. These three parties involved in the same recycling system have conflicting messages on what to do with pizza boxes. If these communities teamed up to create a single message, it would be much more concise and heard by a wider audience.
Many other examples of contradictory messaging can be seen in municipal recycling programs, such as disagreements on which plastics are recyclable. The Recycling Partnership offers a “MRFshed Report,” available at https://recyclingpartnership.org/mrfshed-report, that examines specific details on this topic.
Step 3: Design your educational pieces, understanding that a few differences in the programs are acceptable. This idea is known as “modular messaging,” producing the same style message with slightly different content. Modular messaging can be used in neighboring communities that take material to one MRF or even in statewide recycling programs with multiple MRFs.
Recycling isn’t identical in neighboring communities, cities or counties. One community might have a hefty education budget that includes hiring a public relations firm to design educational pieces, while another community might have a program that is strapped for every dollar. Regardless of the size of the community’s recycling education budget, the concept is the same: Keep it simple and keep it consistent.
Harmonizing in action
Communities, cities, counties and states across the U.S. have applied the above three steps to harmonize their recycling messaging to residents.
Last year, a few rural communities in Tennessee came together to ensure their municipal recycling stakeholders sang the same tune about their MRFs and drop-off programs. The education offered the same look and feel with slight variations, depending on the community where it was distributed.
In this example, a postcard was designed for each community, informing residents and businesses of the recycling program and what is and isn’t acceptable. Each community used the same language, look and feel for the postcards, but there were nuances. In Cumberland, Tennessee, the postcards noted that cans, cartons, paper, glass and plastic were acceptable for recycling. In Knoxville and Marshall, Tennessee, the postcards noted that their communities do not accept glass for recycling. Also, consistent signage was used at the drop-off sites in rural Tennessee.
These communities took a statewide approach to sharing a harmonized message on recycling. In 2019, they are planning to release a new media campaign to help brand the state’s message on recycling.
Regarding the state’s recycling communication efforts, Larry Christley, materials management program manager for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, says, “Tennessee is a popular destination for tourism and a place for people to call home. Because of this, a consistent message on how or what to recycle is very important to help eliminate contamination—a simple clear message that all can understand and remember.”
South of Tennessee, various Florida- based stakeholders—the city of Tampa, Hillsborough County, Pinellas County and the city of St. Petersburg—partnered to orchestrate a unified recycling education campaign around plastic bags.
At the 2018 Resource Recycling Conference in St. Louis, Alita Kane, the recycling coordinator for the city of Tampa, said, “The missing link was that while we all had strong recycling outreach programs, they were not necessarily consistent and concise across the region.”
Kane added that it was apparent that the stakeholders involved all needed new recycling education approaches.
These communities did that by developing a regional message to reduce recycling contamination with the primary goal to make it easier to understand recycling rules. The communities launched two campaigns in the past two years, one of which was focused on “no plastic bags” and the other focused on “no tanglers.”
In April 2017, the communities launched the “no plastic bags” message. As a result of this effort, feedback from local MRFs was positive—they saw noticeably cleaner inbound material.
In June 2018, a second campaign was launched around “no tanglers. The campaign lasted 14 weeks and featured 26 print ads in nine publications, 17 billboards, radio ads on eight stations, social media ads and direct mailers. Overall, it reached about 2 million residents across the region. Many residents were quick to respond to this campaign, as well.
Although the Florida communities launched two separate campaigns, both education campaigns featured similar, uniform messaging.
This concept of harmonizing recycling messages is spreading—the city of Milwaukee and neighboring Waukesha County, Wisconsin, are planning to release a joint educational message this year. Numerous other states and MRFsheds from around the country are considering collaboration to harmonize recycling messages. Tools are available to help countless communities join forces to deliver a harmonized recycling message.
Jill Martin is a senior technical assistance specialist for The Recycling Partnership, Falls Church, Virginia. She can be reached at jmartin@recyclingpartnership.org.
China’s tightening import policies for recovered paper are changing the paper stock grades that are available to U.S. consumers and affecting the flow of scrap paper globally.
Speakers at the 2018 Paper & Plastics Recycling Conference in Chicago this October said the old corrugated containers (OCC) No. 12 grade that would normally be sold domestically has been shipping to China in increasing volumes this year. The grade, which is comprised of retail, distribution center and grocery store material, is generally of a higher quality than the OCC recovered from U.S. residential recycling programs through single-stream material recovery facilities (MRFs). This residential material, however, is what is currently being offered to U.S. mills since China has tightened quality requirements for recovered paper imports.
In addition, the growth of e-commerce has changed the economics of recycling in the U.S., making local recovery programs critical to recovering those boxes, D.J. VanDeusen of Atlanta-based WestRock said during the conference. (For a Q&A with VanDeusen, see the feature “Going deeper,” beginning on page 70 of the accompanying December issue of Recycling Today.)
China’s domestically collected OCC has become very expensive for mills within that country as the balance between demand and supply has tightened significantly, Hannah Zhao of Boston-based RISI Inc. told attendees, making U.S. collected OCC more desirable to Chinese mills.
"The flow of mixed paper also has been affected by China’s recovered fiber import policies. In some U.S. communities, the material is going to landfill.”
Outside of China, other Asian countries have been able to import much more recovered paper from North America than they had in the past, she added.
The flow of mixed paper also has been affected by China’s recovered fiber import policies. In some U.S. communities, the material is going to landfill because no consumers are willing to take it. As much as 500,000 tons of mixed paper likely have been landfilled as of mid-October in the U.S., Bill Moore of Moore & Associates said at the conference. (For more on Moore’s view of the mixed paper sector, see “What’s next,” starting on page S10.) Its value also has declined considerably since Chinese mills stopped purchasing this material.
Moore said he anticipates other countries will continue to increase their imports of U.S. recovered paper grades in the next few years. Containerboard projects planned for the U.S. and in other parts of the world, he said, will help to consume U.S. mixed paper and OCC.
While the present may be challenging for a number of recovered fiber grades, Moore and other speakers at the 2018 Paper & Plastics Recycling Conference say they feel the future will be brighter.
