2012 Legislative Platform | Solid Waste Management Coordinating Board

Approved: December 14, 2011

About the Solid Waste Management Coordinating Board

The Solid Waste Management Coordinating Board (SWMCB) is a joint powers board comprised of two commissioners from Anoka, Carver, Dakota, Hennepin, Ramsey and Washington counties. To enhance intergovernmental coordination, the Board also includes ex-officio representation from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA).

The goals of the SWMCB are to increase the efficiency and environmental effectiveness of the Region's solid waste management system and save taxpayer dollars. Member counties use the SWMCB as the regional forum through which collaborative opportunities that cost-effectively improve waste management outcomes are identified and implemented.

The SWMCB lists fours areas of focus in its 2012 workplan:

The SWMCB 2012 Legislative Platform

The SWMCB supports the State’s solid waste management hierarchy and legislative actions that enhance the support of recycling, composting and processing over land disposal. In accordance with those principles, the SWMCB supports fully utilizing existing capacity to process waste that is not reduced, reused or recycled.　

The MPCA’s enforcement of Minn. Stat. §473.848 precludes the disposal of unprocessed waste if processing capacity exists for the Region, an important tool in promoting the waste management hierarchy. Enforcement of Minn. Stat. §473.848 will create new private sector jobs, reduce costs for the State’s businesses, and help generate renewable energy within the State.

The SWMCB believes that the State’s waste management objectives can only be met by recycling, composting, recovering organic waste (including yard waste such as garden waste, leaves and tree and shrub prunings), and processing the waste that remains to recover materials and energy. The processing of waste is therefore an important element in the waste management system for waste that is not reduced, reused or recycled. Finally, processing facilities recover materials for recycling and generate steam and electricity using local, renewable fuel. That renewable fuel not only reduces landfilling, it also provides power to residents and businesses throughout the State.

The SWMCB supports protecting and enhancing SCORE funding to counties, which creates jobs and supports the State’s economy.

County and city support of residential and commercial recycling programs is critical to sustaining this important economic activity, and continued State support is vital to ongoing programmatic success. The SWMCB continues to support Minnesota’s Solid Waste Management Tax (SWMT) that is collected on haulers’ bills throughout the State and provides funding to local governments through SCORE grants. The SWMT was specifically created to fund programs for recycling and for managing solid waste according to the State’s solid waste management hierarchy, but a substantial portion of the funds are now diverted each year to the State’s General Fund (not an original intention of the law).

To provide opportunities for growth throughout the private-sector recycling industry, and improve environmental outcomes locally, SWMCB Counties continue to oversee recycling programs throughout the Region that have to be funded with additional local dollars. The SWMCB supports directing all SWMT revenue toward important recycling initiatives, including SCORE grants to alleviate the burden on property tax payers around the Region.

The SWMCB supports efforts to develop a statewide Extended Producer Responsibility Framework that supports product stewardship principles.

To save taxpayers’ dollars and eliminate the costly, publicly-funded clean-ups that result from the disposal of products, manufacturers should be responsible for the products they develop - including managing those products at the end of their useful life. With an Extended Producer Responsibility Framework, manufacturers account for the full cost of their products within the original purchase price, thereby covering the back-end costs associated with the product’s impacts on the environment – all without requiring future government intervention.

Extended Producer Responsibility encourages manufacturers to reduce their costs by improving product design by more carefully considering end-of-life product management. Pending a comprehensive approach to product stewardship, the SWMCB continues to support product stewardship efforts targeted at specific, high-priority products such as paint, carpet, mattresses and mercury light bulbs.

The SWMCB supports collaborative efforts to amend the electronics waste (e-waste) statute to more cost effectively collect and manage e-waste, following publication of the MPCA e-waste status report in January 2012.

E-Waste recycling is currently managed pursuant to Minn. Stat. §115A.1310. The SWMCB supports amendments to the statute that assure a more cost effective program that is consistent with the principles of product stewardship. Finally, since the collection and management of e-waste is a multi-stakeholder responsibility, the SWMCB seeks to work collaboratively with the Legislature, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, other Minnesota counties and the private sector to develop and enact improvements to the existing e-waste statute.