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Basic Information
What Can You Save Today?
The Resource Conservation Challenge (RCC) is a national effort to conserve natural resources and energy by managing materials more efficiently. We conserve energy and preserve natural resources by committing ourselves to:
- Reduce more waste;
- Reuse and recycle more products;
- Buy more recycled and recyclable products; and
- Reduce toxic chemicals in waste.
RCC Goals
- Prevent waste in the first place
- Reduce risk from and minimize the use of toxic chemicals
- Use environmentally efficient manufacturing processes that include reuse and recycling
- Design and use durable, reusable, and recyclable products
- Find safe, widespread uses for industrial materials
- Manage materials, not waste
- Minimize our individual and collective impacts on our environment.
Making Change Happen
We are working with states, industry, businesses, and others to find smarter, faster ways to accomplish RCC goals. Whether we partner within the federal government, with major businesses, or with a town and its residents, we use approaches or principles that yield environmental results.
The RCC is working hard to reduce waste and increase the reuse and recycling of materials. We’ve targeted the nation’s largest waste streams, and set priorities for:
- Recycling municipal solid waste;
- Reusing and recycling industrial materials;
- Reducing priority and toxic chemicals in products and waste; and
- Promoting green initiatives, especially the safe design and recycling of electronics.
Reaching a 35 Percent National Recycling Rate by 2008
We’re reinvigorating the public’s commitment to, and value placed on, recycling. We hope to help the nation achieve our 35 percent goal by focusing on:
We’re working with states, local governments, national recycling organizations, and recycling businesses to provide more opportunities for recycling at local levels. America's Marketplace Recycles! is one example of how we’re cooperating with the commercial and municipal sectors that provide the greatest opportunities for success.
Reusing and Recycling Industrial Materials
Historically, Americans simply disposed of millions and millions of tons of industrial byproducts. Now, through the RCC we’re trying to increase reuse and recycling of these industrial materials. We have opportunities to increase the use of coal ash, construction and demolition on debris, and foundry sands in highway, building, and other construction projects. When we safely use these materials we:
- Conserve virgin resources;
- Reduce energy use and associated greenhouse gas emissions; and
- Extend the useful life of landfills.
There are also economic advantages to the safe reuse of some industrial byproducts. We’re aggressively looking for smart ways to use:
Protecting Health and Ecosystems by Reducing Risk from Toxic Chemicals
We’re taking careful and deliberate steps to remove the worst chemicals, such as lead, mercury, and dioxins, from our environment. These chemicals, along with 28 others, are federal priorities because they are persistent, bioaccumulative, and highly toxic. We’re trying to reduce risk from these chemicals.
Companies can produce less waste and thus lower their disposal costs by substituting, eliminating, or recycling certain chemicals in manufacturing processes. We ask companies to voluntarily:
- Substitute safer alternatives when they can;
- Minimize the amount of priority chemicals they use, if they can’t substitute for them;
- Maximize their recycling efforts; and
- Design products to minimize exposure to, and release of, priority chemicals during manufacturing and use.
Through the National Partnership for Environmental Priorities (NPEP), we’re providing technical assistance and special recognition to help motivate companies to reduce both the risk from and amount of priority chemicals they use.
Promoting and Practicing Environmental Stewardship for Electronic Products
Computers and other electronic products are one of the fastest growing (and among the least recycled) components of America’s waste stream. We estimate that we discard electronic products at the rate of 2 million a year. On top of that are millions of televisions, video games, CD players, telephones, and computers that are stored somewhere because their owners cannot, or do not know how to, reuse or recycle them.
Our national partners are collaborating with us to address environmental considerations along the entire life cycle of electronic products. Focusing initially on personal computers, televisions, and cell phones, we're striving to change the overall design, operation, reuse, recycling, and disposal of electronic equipment. We are committed to maintaining and building markets for recyclable electronics.
One way we're supporting markets is through the Federal
Electronics Challenge (FEC) 
,
a voluntary effort by federal agencies to buy greener electronics
and to manage used electronics in an environmentally responsible
way.
Our Plug-In To eCycling partners are working diligently to provide recycling services for used electronic equipment. Working with them, we plan to increase recycling services nationwide by 50 percent over the next two years.
Changing Our Lives
Accepting responsibility for improving our environment means changing our habits, processes, and practices. Everyone has a role. Businesses, consumers, and governments work together to ensure change across the whole supply chain—from designing better, less toxic products to ensuring easier product reuse and recyclability, to constructing millions of miles of highways using millions of tons of coal ash.
Our RCC partners understand these concepts and are our means to this end. Their innovative solutions point us toward an environmentally sustainable future, where waste is a concept of the past. Moving to an efficient and safe materials flow system is our ultimate goal. We acknowledge government and industry progress and willingness to adopt a resource and energy conservation ethic. The RCC combines and strengthens many individual efforts into a unified force that:
- Conserves energy and materials;
- Reduces risks from the use of toxic and priority chemicals in waste; and
- Prevents pollution and promotes materials reuse and recycling in all product life cycles.