New York City’s Reuse Impact Calculator: Quantifying the zero waste impact of materials reuse

Abstract

In 2015, the city of New York (NYC) introduced a plan to reduce the volume of collected solid waste by 90% by 2030 and envisioned the expansion of reuse opportunities as one of its main drivers. The assessment of the contributions from reuse initiatives to the advancement of waste prevention and waste reduction goals requires a quantitative understanding of the scope of reuse activities. The high population density in NYC and well-organised collection efforts by The City of New York Department of Sanitation (DSNY) (DSNY) have resulted in a structure that enables the informal sector to readily contribute and access the reuse market. Importantly, the scale of the operations in NYC enable the results found to be a model for other municipalities of similar size. This article presents the Reuse Impact Calculator, developed from the need to automate and quantify the environmental impact of product reuse by nonprofit enterprises in NYC. Specifically, we will explain the development process, show the novel characteristics of this calculator, describe the software in terms of data input, auto mapping functionality and calculations and present a case study to demonstrate the implementation of the Reuse Impact Calculator. This calculator is a dynamic and easily modifiable tool that converts diverse datasets to comparable conditions and allows the assessment of the impact of reuse organisations to waste prevention in NYC.

Approaching a zero-waste strategy by reuse in New York City: Challenges and potential

“…The 2015 DSNY biennial report expressed its objective of zero waste by 2030 and ranked reduce and reuse activities high in priority to meet this target. Consequently, the DonateNYC program was created to promote and encourage non-profit reuse organizations and expedite the donation of used products to NYC residents (Fortuna and Castaldi, 2018). Here, DonateNYC quantifies the material quantities and records the flow of various product segments that are being reused.…”

“…The evaluation tool that was developed for this exercise was called the RIC (Fortuna and Diyamandoglu, 2015). Fortuna and Castaldi (2018) extended the RIC applicability to the DonateNYC reuse inventory to estimate the average weight and material composition of reuse products, which also included food donations. Such an approach enables mass-based quantification of product labeled flows and could also be coupled to life-cycle analysis models to confirm the environmental impact of reuse activities.…”

How do we change what we can’t describe? A comprehensive Framework of User Behaviours in a materials circular economy.

“…Circular benefits only arise when these behaviours are chosen instead of 'linear' behaviours, a concept known as replacement or displacement (see e.g. Fortuna & Castaldi, 2018;Stevenson & Gmitrowicz, 2012). This point is central to the European Environment Agency (EEA) typology ( 2022), which pairs circular behaviours with opposing linear behaviour based on the decision(s) that prompt the behaviours.…”

Measuring circular reuse magnitude and replacement rate: A new method

“…Reuse is in place once a product is disposed by its owner and-instead of becoming waste-is acquired by another party, hence extending product lifetime and postponing end-of-life (EoL) (Blomsma & Brennan, 2017;Cooper & Gutowski, 2017;Reike et al, 2018). Since reuse is considered as a waste management strategy (Gregson et al, 2013;Kirchherr et al, 2017;Ranta et al, 2018), countries and regions want to monitor the amount of reuse (European Environment Agency, 2016;Fortuna & Castaldi, 2018;Moraga et al, 2019), which is exchanged through a variety of exchange channels (e.g., second-hand retail sector, governmentally accredited reuse shops, car boot sales, and so forth; Fortuna & Diyamandoglu, 2017;Gregson et al, 2013;Hibbert et al, 2005;Lane et al, 2009).…”

“…This prevents the monitoring of reuse based on macro scale data, i.e., data based on the regional flow of reusable goods taking into account consumer and market related properties (Kirchherr et al, 2017;Kristensen & Mosgaard, 2020;Moraga et al, 2019;Pauliuk, 2018). Understanding the total amount of reuse may help governments and practitioners alike to develop waste policies that effectively promote reuse (Cole et al, 2019;Fortuna & Diyamandoglu, 2016;Fortuna & Castaldi, 2018;Moraga et al, 2019). Furthermore, the beneficial environmental impact of reuse-through its advancement of waste prevention-is often taken for granted.…”