It's become an encouragingly common story to see evidence of how recycling can generate more value than landfilling waste. The recent GreenBiz article The Successes Possible from a Jigsaw Puzzle Theory of Recycling outlined one such business model, Donco Recycling Solutions -- a firm constantly seeking innovative uses for scrap or waste from one industry in manufacturing streams of others. In essence, a high value matchmaker who plays a small but meaningful role within the larger puzzle of this untapped system.

It's untapped because only 34 percent of U.S. municipal solid waste found its way to recycling or composting in 2010.Combine the remaining 66 percent with other non-hazardous sources of industrial waste and there exists a veritable gold mine of material flows which, if accessed, could generate the classic triple bottom line -- economic, environmental, and social benefits at all points in the value chain. In some cases such as used beverage containers this amounts to over $2.9 billion in lost value [PDF] annually.

What then is preventing rampant investment in closed loop material recovery by the U.S. business sector? At the outset it appears that a compelling business case doesn't exist. But dig deeper and you start to find that even companies who have realized the economic and environmental benefits of recycling can't seem to create effective systems at scale. Add the potential of efficient systems to the social benefits of recycling from job creation (up to 70,000 jobs from increasbiing recycling rates of beverage containers alone) and we should be prepared for the perfect storm....Read the full article on GreenBiz.com