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Recycled
Content Products
Section 6002 of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)
established the Federal buy-recycled program. EPA designates recycled
content products in the Comprehensive Procurement Guidelines (CPG) and
provides recommendations for purchasing the products in Recovered
Materials Advisory Notices (RMANs). The recommendations primarily
pertain to the levels of recycled materials that the designated
products should contain, but EPA also identifies relevant government
and consensus specifications (e.g., ASTM standards). To date, EPA has
designated 54 products in the following 8 categories:
- Paper and Paper
Products
- Vehicular Products
- Construction Products
- Transportation Products
- Park and Recreation Products
- Landscaping Products
- Non-paper Office Products
- Miscellaneous
On April 30, 2004, EPA
designated
seven addtional recycled content
products: modular threshold ramps, non-pressure pipe, roofing
materials, office furniture, rebuilt vehicular parts, bike racks, and
blasting grit. The requirement to buy these products containing
recycled materials kicks in on May 2, 2005.
To learn more about
EPA's program and the designated products, visit http://www.epa.gov/cpg/index.htm
or see the latest Comprehensive
Procurement Guideline.
RCRA requires Federal agencies to purchase the EPA-designated products
and to establish Affirmative Procurement Programs (APP) consisting of 4
elements: preference program, promotion program, vendor certification
of recycled content, and annual review and monitoring. A more
comprehensive overview can be found in the Task
Force's Model APP.
Many Federal agencies
have established web-based affirmative procurement programs and/or have
electronic versions of related agency policies.
The Task Force provides
information about government and commercial sources of
re-refined oil, the retreads qualified by the Army's Tank-Automotive
and Armaments Command, and the copier paper sources qualified by the
Government Printing Office.
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