American Carbon Registry Initiates Approval of ... Carbon Offset Methodology for Deltaic Wetland Restoration ... to unlock carbon finance potential for wetland restoration activities

http://is.gd/koCRHH

American Carbon Registry (ACR), a nonprofit enterprise of Winrock International, announces an open public comment period for a ... carbon offset methodology that will both quantify how wetland restoration work can combat climate change and provide a way to help pay for rebuilding the Gulf of Mexico’s disappearing coastal wetland. The methodology, Restoration of Degraded Deltaic Wetlands of the Mississippi Delta, was funded by Entergy Corporation and developed by Dr. Sarah K. Mack of New Orleans-based Tierra Resources LLC, with contributions from Dr. Robert R. Lane, Dr. John W. Day and Tiffany M. Potter.

The new wetland offset methodology is unique not only because it is the first carbon offset methodology to target deltaic wetland restoration, but also because it uses a modular format, which provides flexibility for numerous types of wetland restoration techniques and facilitates methodology expansion. Another key innovation of the methodology is the incorporation of hydrologic management of nutrient-rich waters as a restoration technique, including options for diversion of river water into wetland, introduction of nonpoint source runoff into wetlands and discharge of treated municipal effluent into wetlands. Avoided loss and afforestation are also included wetland restoration techniques.

The primary hurdle to implement Mississippi Delta restoration is the price tag, estimated between $10 billion for near-term restoration to $150 billion for broader restoration and protection measures. Louisiana’s Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast recently estimated that between $20 billion and $50 billion will realistically be available for funding over the next 50 years, but acknowledged a budget up to five times that size could be needed. Under the new methodology, carbon credits created by restoring wetlands can be registered and sold to help finance additional wetland restoration, Dr. Mack said.

...

A ... study .. published [September 14, 2011] by Restore America’s Estuaries, “Jobs & Dollars: Big Returns from Coastal Habitat Restoration,” [and available at http://www.estuaries.org/images/81103-RAE_17_FINAL_web.pdf] confirms that investments in coastal habitat restoration produce jobs at a higher rate than many other sectors -- including oil & gas, road infrastructure and green building retrofit projects. This study coincides with further efforts by Entergy to explore solutions to the environmental and economic impacts facing coastal wetland. In an open dialog to address mitigation of coastal stressors such as hurricanes, coastal erosion and rising sea levels, Entergy’s 2010 study “Building a Resilient Energy Gulf Coast,” produced in cooperation with America’s Energy Coast and America’s Wetland Foundation, presents a picture of what the Gulf coast will look like environmentally as well as economically by the year 2030 if no mitigation or remediation activity is undertaken.

Louisiana boasts 40 percent of the country’s coastal wetland - more than 4 million acres. Of total U.S. coastal wetland loss, 80 percent has occurred in the Mississippi Delta. An estimated 90 percent of current loss occurs in Louisiana -- the equivalent of losing one football field of wetlands every hour. The loss of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands has major national environmental and economic implications. Not only is the Mississippi Delta one of the world’s most unique and diverse ecosystems, but its wetlands and waterways contribute tens of billions of dollars to the national economy every year and support millions of jobs. Much of the U.S. depends on sustaining the navigation, flood control, energy production, and seafood production functions of the Mississippi Delta and river system. Each of those functions is currently at severe risk due to coastal wetland loss.

As a first step toward achieving the massive global GHG mitigation potential from wetland restoration, the methodology is expected to be expanded in the future for wetland restoration in other regions and other wetland restoration practices. The ACR approval process for the methodology, which includes public comment and scientific peer review, is targeted to be complete this spring.

...

The “Jobs & Dollars: Big Returns from Coastal Habitat Restoration,” report (at http://www.estuaries.org/images/81103-RAE_17_FINAL_web.pdf) found:

• Restoring our coasts can create more than 30 jobs for each million dollars invested. That’s more than twice as many jobs as the oil and gas and road construction industries combined.
• During 2010, restoration efforts for the Chesapeake Bay, Great Lakes, and Everglades contributed $427 million in economic output and supported more than 3,200 jobs.
• The $72-million Central Wetlands Unit restoration project in New Orleans is on track to create 280 direct jobs and 400 indirect and induced jobs, for a total of 680 jobs over the project’s life.
• The restoration of Florida’s Everglades is a 4:1 return on investment.

Restoration improves coastal habitats and helps local economies by creating three different types of jobs: direct, indirect, and induced.

• Direct Jobs: People using their skills to restore damaged wetlands, shellfish beds, coral reefs and fish passages.
• Indirect Jobs: Jobs in industries that supply materials for restoration projects, such as lumber, concrete and nursery plants.
• Induced Jobs: Jobs in businesses that provide local goods and services, such as clothing and food, to people working on restoration projects.

American Carbon Registry www.AmericanCarbonRegistry.or

Press Release dated Jan. 18, 2012
Hap Tip/See also http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/calculating-the-carbon-value-of-a-swamp/?src=recg

Regulating Greenhouse Gases from Coal Power Plants under the Clean Air Act

http://is.gd/lzeYJh

Under authority granted by the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency is developing performance standards for existing stationary sources, such as power plants and industrial facilities. Coal-fired electricity generators represent an important part of this regulatory effort as they account for about one-third of annual U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. New research from RFF’s Josh Linn, Erin Mastrangelo, and Dallas Burtraw confirms that there are important, low-cost opportunities to reduce emissions at existing coal-fired facilities in the short run.

The novelty and potential of the electricity sector standards raise three questions:

1. What are the available abatement opportunities from existing coal-fired power plants?
2. What are the costs of reducing emissions?
3. What is the increase in utilization at plants after they become more efficient?

The authors analyze the actual operating efficiency of the entire fleet of coal units in the United States, finding that fleetwide, emissions rate reductions of up to 5 percent may be technically feasible without changing the amount of electricity generated with coal.

Using the response of units to previous changes in fuel prices for the years 1985–2009, they estimate the costs of efficiency improvements to be as low as or perhaps somewhat lower than the engineering estimates currently used by EPA. They also find that efficiency improvements would lead to increased utilization of plants, which would erode up to 15 percent of the emissions reductions achievable by efficiency improvements.

The research provides the first empirical information about the actual magnitude and cost of these potential efficiency improvements across the fleet of existing generating units. Substantial long-term reductions in GHG emissions from the power sector will require greater use of nonemitting sources (renewables, nuclear), lower-emitting sources (natural gas), or postcombustion control of carbon. However, this analysis provides evidence that there exist important opportunities to reduce emissions in the short run.

The full paper is available free of charge at http://www.rff.org/Publications/Pages/PublicationDetails.aspx?PublicationID=21723

Abstract: The Clean Air Act has assumed the central role in U.S. climate policy, directing the Environmental Protection Agency to develop regulations governing the emissions of greenhouse gases from existing coal-fired power plants. The cost and environmental effectiveness of policy options depend on abatement costs, the magnitude of emissions reduction opportunities, and the sensitivity of plant utilization. This paper examines the operation of electricity-generating units over 25 years to estimate the marginal costs and potential magnitude of emissions reductions that could result from improvements in their operating efficiency. We find that a 10 percent increase in coal prices causes a 0.3 to 0.9 percent heat rate reduction, broadly consistent with engineering assessments of abatement costs and opportunities. We also find that coal prices have a significant effect on utilization, but that will vary depending on the policy design. The results are used to compare cost-effectiveness of alternative policies.

Resources For the Future (RFF) www.RFF.org
January 10, 2012

Taxpayer and Environmental Groups: Corps of Engineers Uses New Recipe to Cook the Books – Again – To Push Wasteful Delaware River Deepening Project - Report Released on Updated Economic Analysis

http://taxpayer.net/resources.php?category=&type=Project&proj_id=5058

Responding to renewed economic claims for Deepening the Delaware River, a coalition of taxpayer, community, and environmental organizations issued a new independent analysis they say proves once again that the deepening project is an economic loser. The groups issued the analysis and an accompanying report titled “Army Corps Cooks the Books Again,” in response to a May 2011 analysis issued by the Army Corps of Engineers.

“The Army Corps once again tried to mislead Congress and the public about the deepening project – a renewed analysis by Dr. Bob Stearns clearly demonstrates how the Army Corps manipulated their calculations so as to present a false picture for the project,” said Maya van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper. “The inappropriate calculation was not hard to find. The Corps’ own report provides the analysis and numbers. Without deepening, shippers will use the feeder port approach which is far cheaper than trucking, and when all matters are considered, is also cheaper than deepening. The Corps’ assessment pretends that without deepening, shippers would use the far more expensive trucking option to get goods to the Philadelphia area markets. But the Corps’ own practices and procedures make clear that the shipping alternative is the best alternative and the one that would be selected, thereby supporting and encouraging port jobs without the need for a nearly $300 million, environmentally devastating deepening project.”

According to the new Cooked the Books report, correction of the shipping vs trucking error alone reduces the benefit-cost ratio for the project to, at best 1.1 (or to below 1 to 1, depending on a shipping diversion assumption) -- far below the 1.64 claimed by the Army Corps’ May 2011 report. Supplemental information in the report provided by the coalition of organizations identifies a number of additional errors they say, when included in the calculation, revive the GAO finding that deepening would provide less than a dollar of benefit for every $1 of cost paid for by the taxpayers.

“The Corps’ economic analysis deserves to be on a Chinese menu under twice-cooked pork. The errors were too obvious and too basic to be a mistake” says Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. “But more importantly, the new report is being used to justify renewed funding for a project that doesn’t meet the Federal Government’s basic criteria for ensuring tax dollars are invested only in those projects that will generate clear economic value for the country.”

“This new economic analysis makes it clear that the Delaware River Deepening project is an economic looser, which poses substantial environmental risks. The Army Corps needs to take a hard look at its project review practices if projects like this, that don’t meet the Corps’ own basic economic standards, are getting the green light,” asserts George Sorvalis, Coordinator with the Water Protection Network.

In a report issued in April, 2010, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued its third challenge to the reliability and accuracy of the Army Corps economic claims for deepening (the first GAO report being issued in 2002, the second challenge in the form of Congressional testimony given in 2006).

The Army Corps 2011 report was issued in apparent response to the less than glowing, GAO 2010 report. The May 2011 Army Corps analysis was its 8th economic analysis of the deepening. “But no one ever learned of this report or got an opportunity to review it until we secured the report through a Freedom of Information Act request,” says van Rossum. “As soon as we received a copy we pursued an independent review of its claims. We think our findings clearly demonstrate why the Army Corps felt the need to keep this newest analysis an apparent secret – because it’s clear that once again they cooked the books, a practice far too common with the Army Corps and one that demeans the entire federal government.”

Health Impacts of Power-Exporting Plants in Northern Mexico

http://www.rff.org/Publications/Pages/PublicationDetails.aspx?PublicationID=21721

Abstract: In the past two decades, rapid population and economic growth on the U.S.–Mexico border has spurred a dramatic increase in electricity demand. In response, American energy multinationals have built power plants just south of the border that export most of their electricity to the United States. This development has stirred considerable controversy because these plants effectively skirt U.S. environmental air pollution regulations in a severely degraded international airshed. Yet to our knowledge, this concern has not been subjected to rigorous scrutiny. This paper uses a suite of air dispersion, health impacts, and valuation models to assess the human health damages in the United States and Mexico caused by air emissions from two power-exporting plants in Mexicali, Baja California. We find that these emissions have limited but nontrivial health impacts, mostly by exacerbating particulate pollution in the United States, and we value these damages at more than half a million dollars per year. These findings demonstrate that power-exporting plants can have cross-border health effects and bolster the case for systematically evaluating their environmental impacts.

The full paper is available free of charge at http://www.rff.org/RFF/Documents/RFF-DP-11-18-REV.pdf

Mean estimates of the annual value of health damages attributable  to Intergen emissions are $230,000 in the United States and $104,000 in Mexico. Mean estimates of annual damages attributable to Sempra emission are $160,000 in the United States and $72,000 in Mexico. The total value of annual health damages attributable to both plants is $566,000.

Health effects, concentration-response and valuation studies are summarized in Appendix tables. For Ozone costs of five separate health effects are estimated: 1) Respiratory Hospital Admissions, 2) Asthma Emergency Room Visits, 3) School Absence Days, 4) Minor Restricted Activity Days and 5) Short-term Mortality.  For particulates PM2.5  more effect costs are estimated including 1) Mortality, 2) Chronic Bronchitis, 3) Chronic bronchitis (CB) incidences are estimated annually for the age group 27 and over, 3) Nonfatal Heart Attacks, 4) Respiratory Hospital Admissions, 5) Cardiovascular Hospital Admissions, 6) Asthma Emergency Room Visits, 7) Acute Bronchitis in Children, 8) Upper Respiratory Symptoms in Children, 9) Lower Respiratory Symptoms in Children, 10) Asthma Exacerbations, 11) Work Loss Days, and 12) Minor Restricted Activity Days.

[The authors] use the VSL (value of a statistical life) estimate from Mrozek and Taylor (2002), which has a central value of $2.324 million. This estimate is quite conservative: it is at the low end of the values used in benefit-cost analysis. For example, 2009 U.S. EPA rules mandate that benefit-cost analyses use a VSL of $7.9 million, and 2009 U.S. Department of Transportation rules mandate a VSL of $6.0 million (Copeland 2010). Baseline incidence rates were obtained from the BenMap model used by U.S. EPA for regulatory analyses.

Chronic bronchitis (CB) incidences are estimated annually for the age group 27 and over. Baseline incidence and prevalence rates are from BenMap.  There are three valuation studies for chronic bronchitis. All three are from the BenMap model, and no specific studies are cited. The two cost-of- illness studies, one with a 3 percent discount rate and one with a 7 percent discount rate, are weighted by age within the 27-and-over age group. The other study is based on willingness to pay to avoid a case of pollution-related chronic bronchitis; this valuation does not vary within the 27-and-over age  group. Nonfatal heart attack (NFHA) incidences are estimated seasonally for the age group 18 and over. Baseline incidence rates are from BenMap. There are two NFHA valuation studies in TAF, both from BenMap with no specific study cited: one with a 3 percent discount rate, and one with a 7 percent discount rate. Both studies incorporate 10 years of medical costs and 5 years of wage costs.

by Allen Blackman, Santosh Chandru, Alberto Mendoza-Domínguez and Armistead G. Russell
Resources For the Future (RFF) www.RFF.org
RFF Discussion Paper 11-18; January, 2012

Colony Collapse Disorder: The Market Response to Bee Disease

http://www.perc.org/files/ps50.pdf
Although the winter has barely begun and the spring thaw still feels a long way off for ... Northerners, beekeepers are busily preparing for the beginning of the pollination cycle in California and other Southern states. With more than 2.5 million hives of bees on the road each year, honey bee pollination makes our diet more nutritious and tasty. Yet, in 2007 the popular press wrote that Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, was a threat to the honey bee and its valuable pollination services. Headlines such as "Bee Colony Collapses Could Threaten U.S. Food Supply," (Associated Press, May 3, 2007) caught the attention of readers, but in reality, Colony Collapse Disorder has had little impact on American consumers.

... Randy Rucker and Wally Thurman [claim] in the most recent installment of the PERC Policy Series, a market response provided a solution to a real problem. Despite early predictions that CCD would cause billions of dollars of direct loss in crop production, people in the beekeeping industry reacted so swiftly that no changes were detected by the consumers. Fruit farmers and beekeepers took into account the effects they have on each other and settled the difference through pollination fees and other contract terms. While overcoming the difficulties of CCD has been no easy matter, beekeepers have proven themselves adept at navigating changing market conditions.

"The state of the honey bee population - numbers, vitality, and economic output - are the products of not just the impact of disease but also the economic decisions made by beekeepers and farmers," writes Rucker and Thurman.
...
The full report is available free of charge at http://www.perc.org/files/ps50.pdf.

In 2007, then-Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns warned that “if left unchecked, CCD has the potential to cause a $15 billion direct loss of crop production and $75 billion in indirect losses.”

Three methods are commonly employed by beekeepers to maintain and rebuild hive numbers. Understanding them is key to knowing how the beekeeping industry responds to disease. The first method used to replace weak hives or hives lost over the winter involves a beekeeper splitting a healthy, full-strength hive into two parts.

The second method used to build or replenish hive numbers is to buy packaged bees. There are companies that sell packaged bees for this purpose... The current average price of a three-pound package of bees, which includes roughly 12,000 worker bees and a fertilized queen, is about $55. If an empty hive is stocked with a package of bees, it might be productive immediately. Soon, however, there will be a drop-off in production due to the time lag between the placement of the package of workers in the hive and the time that a new generation of worker bees is hatched and matured to the point of leaving the hive to collect nectar, pollen, and water. Even if the new queen begins laying fertilized eggs immediately upon her placement in the empty hive, it will take 21–25 days before worker bees hatch. If a hive in Oregon or Washington is stocked with packaged bees in mid-April, it probably will not produce surplus honey until the following year.
...
The average annual rate of winter mortality over 2007–2011 was 33 percent. A reasonable assessment derived from beekeeper surveys is that since the appearance of CCD, mortality rates have at least doubled. Mortality represents an outflow from the population of bees, while the re-queening and splitting of hives and the creation of new colonies represents an inflow. The net result is the observed change in colony numbers.

Estimates of honey bee colony numbers can be obtained from annual surveys of beekeepers conducted by the USDA. Data from these surveys are generally available back to 1939. A prominent feature of the estimates of colony numbers ... is their substantial decline since the mid-20th century. Particularly notable is the gap and abrupt drop in the early- to mid-1980s.... The abrupt drop is the result of a change in 1986 in the data collection procedures used by the USDA....

... Between 2006 and 2007 ... CCD might have had its first impacts. Colony numbers reveal no notable decrease in the years since the onset of CCD. In fact, there were more colonies in 2009 than there were in 2006 (or any other year since 1999). Given that an average of one-third of the honey bee colonies in the United States have died in each of the four winters since the onset of CCD, how can this be? Perhaps it is because beekeepers have always lost hives during the winter. Sustainable and profitable commercial beekeeping requires them to replace dead and weak colonies using the methods described above.

Since the onset of CCD, beekeepers have had to replace more hives to maintain their colony numbers, and the evidence suggests they have done exactly that.
...
Beekeepers supply the services of bees for two commercial purposes: to provide pollination for farmers and to produce honey. Bee disease that increases the costs of beekeeping should increase the price of the industry’s outputs. Honey is traded internationally; and domestic honey price effects seem less likely than do price effects on pollination services. To look for evidence of increased pollination fees due to Colony Collapse Disorder, consider data from a survey [of almond and apple pollination fees] administered by Michael Burgett of Oregon State University.
...
Almond fees rose from $59 to $89 between 2004 and 2005, and increased again to nearly $140 in inflation-adjusted terms for the years 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009. It is tempting to attribute these fees to Colony Collapse Disorder—and CCD may be partly to blame—but the timing is not right. The first reported instance of CCD was during the winter of 2006–2007, which could only have affected fees beginning in spring 2007.
...
Surveys of California beekeepers conducted by the California State Beekeepers’ Association since 1996 (see Rucker, Thurman, and Burgett 2011 for a statistical analysis of these data sources). They estimate there to be no CCD effect on non-almond pollination fees and $20 of the recent increase in almond fees.
...
Recent almond fees are near $140, so that the implied almond fee had CCD not arisen is $140 - $20 = $120. The implied percentage increase in almond fees due to CCD is then (20/120) × 100 = 16.7%. Further, with a pollination fee for almonds of $120 per colony and a stocking density of two colonies per acre, the cost per acre of pollinating almonds is 2 × $120 = $240. Suppose, as recent industry data suggest, that the yield of almonds is 2,000 pounds per acre and that the farm-gate price of almonds is $2 per pound. Then revenue per acre is 2,000 × $2 = $4,000 and the cost share of pollination in almonds is $240/$4,000 = 0.06 or 6%.

Next, suppose that Smokehouse® Almonds sell for $7 per pound at the retail level and that one pound requires 1.429 pounds of raw almonds (the rate of conversion from at-the-farm and in-the-shell almonds to retail shelled almonds). Then the cost share of farm almonds in the production of Smokehouse® Almonds is (1.429 × $2)/$7 = 0.41.22 Thus, the cost share of pollination services in retail Smokehouse® Almonds is 0.06 × 0.41 = 0.025 or 2.5 percent.

The stipulated 16.7 percent increase in almond pollination fees due to CCD therefore causes the cost of Smokehouse® Almonds to increase by a proportion of 0.167 × 0.025 = 0.004. Four-tenths of one percent of the $7/lb cost of Smokehouse® Almonds is 2.8¢, the implied increase in the shelf price of the can of almonds.... Given the relatively high cost share of pollination at the farm level, the calculation provides something of an upper bound on what one would find for other commodities and products. Against the backdrop of other sources of food price variation, it is no wonder that evidence of CCD at the grocery store has failed to materialize.
...
Concluding that CCD has had little effect on consumers does not imply that its effects are of no concern to beekeepers.... Responses to questions in the PNW survey about replacement methods indicate that beekeepers used the method of splitting hives for almost 80 percent of the colonies replaced.... Suppose a beekeeper inspects his hives and finds that 100 of them are dead. To replace them, he must purchase 100 queens to place with the new splits produced from the healthy parent colonies. Recent advertisements in the American Bee Journal suggest these will cost about $15 each. In addition, about 20 minutes of labor will be required per colony to remove the four or five frames of brood, bees, and honey stores from the parent colony to stock the nuc colony. If labor costs are assumed to be $12 per hour, the labor cost per colony is $4 and the total cost of each split is $15 + $4 = $19.23

Burgett, Rucker, and Thurman (2009) estimate that PNW winter mortality rates increased from about 14 percent prior to the appearance of CCD to roughly 30 percent over the winter of 2007–08. Thus, assuming that CCD is responsible for all of this 16 percentage point difference, about half the colony mortality in the 2007–08 winter is attributable to CCD. The beekeepers who responded to the survey owned 62,100 out of the USDA’s estimated 90,000 colonies in the PNW. Assuming that the beekeepers responding to the survey are representative of the non-responding PNW beekeepers, the demise of about 14,400 (= 90,000 x 0.16) colonies in the PNW was due to CCD. The 25 beekeepers who responded to the 2008 PNW survey owned a total of 62,100 colonies as of Oct.1, 2007, or an average of 2,484 colonies each. Assuming these beekeepers lost 16 percent of their bees to CCD on average, the estimated CCD cost per beekeeper was 0.16 × 2,484 × $19 = $7,551. Offsetting these increased costs are increased beekeeper revenues from higher almond pollination fees, and 72 percent of the colonies in the 2008 survey were rented out for almond pollination.

If, as in the previous section, we take the almond fee increase due to CCD to be $20, then the average PNW beekeeper with 2,484 colonies, who uses 72 percent of them (0.72 × 2,484 = 1,788) to pollinate almonds, gains an increase in revenue of 1,788 × $20 = $35,760. The change in net revenue is $35,760 - $7,079 = $28,681, implying that beekeepers benefit.

by Wally Thurman 1 and Randy Rucker 2
1. Professor of agricultural and resource economics at North Carolina State University and PERC senior fellow
2. Professor of agricultural and resource economics at Montana State University and PERC 2011 Lone Mountain Fellow.
PERC the Property and Environment Research Center www.PERC.org is dedicated to improving environmental quality through property rights and markets. 2048 Analysis Drive Suite A; Bozeman Montana 59718; Tel: 406.587.9591; Email: perc@perc.org
January 17, 2012

Increased Recycling Would Create Nearly 1.5 Million Jobs, Reduce Pollution

http://www.bluegreenalliance.org/press_room/press_releases?id=0170
Higher recycling rates hold the potential to produce millions of new jobs, would strengthen local economies, reduce pollution and improve public health, according to a new report released November 15, 2011.

At a National Recycling Day event at the U.S. Capitol, Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), a representative from the office of U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and a panel of environmental, labor and other leaders discussed the report, "More Jobs, Less Pollution," which found that a 75 percent national recycling rate holds the potential to create millions of new jobs.

"More Jobs, Less Pollution"  is a report from the Tellus Institute prepared for the BlueGreen Alliance, SEIU, NRDC, Teamsters, Recycling Works!, and the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) available free of charge at www.bluegreenalliance.org/morejobslesspollution.

A 75 percent national recycling rate would also reduce CO2 emissions by 276 million metric tons by 2030 - equivalent to eliminating emissions from 72 coal-fired power plants or taking 50 million cars off the road; reduce conventional and toxic emissions that impact human and ecosystem health; and generate a stronger economy by creating a broader employment base.
...

MSW is Municipal Solid Waste, C&D = Construction and Demolition Debris

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) has made available several case studies that demonstrate the waste diversion and economic benefits of the ban. Clarke Corporation, a wholesale distributer of kitchen appliances, renovated and expanded its distribution center in Milford, Mass. Ninety-eight percent of materials generated on site were recycled or reused, resulting in cost savings of $259,043. In another case, recycling during the commercial demolition of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab in Cambridge resulted in 96 percent waste reduction and cost savings of  $17,684. For more information and the C&D recycling case studies, see http://www.mass.gov/dep/recycle/reduce/managing.htm.

The Blue-Green Alliance www.bluegreenalliance.org
Press Release dated November 15, 2011