Primary goals:
1) identify the information (research, analyses, etc) most important to policymakers and planners in making sound climate change decisions regarding management of materials;
2) synthesize and make such information more available where it already exists, and
3) develop a research agenda to identify where more information is needed.
# Topic Description Focus Questions for Topic
1 Finding and comparing waste prevention strategies for governments, local businesses, and households
For Generators: Businesses, Households, and Institutions:

What waste prevention techniques, practices and approaches have proven effective as measured by GHG reduction; or as measured by prevalence of organizational or consumer participation; or by other means?
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What strategies, techniques, practices and approaches have been tried but not sufficiently evaluated, or have not yet been tried but have been proposed, that are considered to have greatest potential?
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Can the results of the various techniques, practices and approaches be compared or are there fundamental differences in the way they are measured across studies? If comparable, what is the comparison?

How do the costs and cost savings for these compare? What factors influence the cost and what strategies can be used to reduce the cost?
2 How we design, make and package products as a new focus of materials management strategy
For Government:

Which government programs, policies, and strategies are the most effective: tax incentives, taxes, zoning, permitting, sales restrictions, subsidies, education, etc?

How much GHG reductions could be achieved by focusing on changes to the design, manufacturing, and packaging of products as a materials management strategy?

How do GHG reductions achievable by changes to product design compare to those achievable by increasing reuse, recycling, landfill diversion and similar end-of-life approaches?

Where and how have product stewardship programs, such as extended producer responsibility and takeback programs, been effective (U.S. and international) at bringing about product design changes that have reduced GHG emissions?
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How do the GHG reductions compare to those associated with recycling, diversion, reuse, etc?
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What have these programs cost and what are the lessons learned?
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
How effective are various government approaches at influencing product design?
3 Changing consumer behavior
4 Changing producer behavior
5 Methods for accounting for materials management in community-scale greenhouse gas inventories

What strategies, techniques and policies are effective at changing the way consumers behave relative to materials management (including purchasing decisions as well as disposal choices) so as to be more sustainable? Measures could conceivably include GHG reductions, participation rates, tons of material avoided, sales volume of types of products, etc.)

What strategies, techniques and policies and innovative approaches have not yet been tried but have been proposed that are considered to have greatest potential?

Can the results of the various strategies, techniques and policies be compared or are there fundamental differences in the way they are measured across studies? If comparable, what is the comparison?

How do the costs for these compare? What factors influence the cost and what strategies can be used to reduce the cost?

Which have been more successful: massmedia approaches or focused, localized, or “hands-on” groups
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Does behavior change more from increasing consumer costs (such as tipping or collection fees), from increasing convenience, or other factors?
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What are the barriers to more sustainable purchasing practices by individuals? How effective are various methods at overcoming those barriers?
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How can behavior change programs best prioritize behaviors and design programs so as to minimize negative rebound effects?
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How effective are green labeling approaches and certifications at changing behavior and how do they compare? Is the impact lessening as more labels and certifications come into existence?
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Apply same focus questions as for consumer behavior, above, but with respect to behavior of producers/manufacturers.
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What is more effective – increasing the costs of unsustainable behavior directly for the producer, or increasing the costs of unsustainable products for the consumer, and relying on buying decisions to influence producer behavior?
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What methods are available, or need to be developed, to address the following in community-scale (state, local) greenhouse gas inventories? o Consumption impacts o Waste prevention impacts and benefits o Recycling and reuse impacts / benefits o Composting versus anaerobic digestion impacts/benefits o Disposal impacts/benefits

What are effective methods of communicating these emissions in an integrated manner (alongside
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traditional geographic-oriented GHG emissions)?
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How can more governments be encouraged to consider upstream impacts in GHG accounting?
6 Optimal waste management pathways

Which materials flow pathways provide the greatest GHG reduction benefit or make end-use markets most viable? (Pathway evaluation could compare, for example, managing food compostables and green yard and wood wastes separate from MSW, versus managing yard and wood waste in one stream and merging food compostables into the MSW waste stream for segregation). Include technologies such as anaerobic digestion, pyrolysis, gasification, etc.

How sensitive are the results (identification of optimal vs. sub-optimal pathways) to different local conditions as well as different modeling assumptions (e.g. energy displaced by waste-to-energy, treatment of land-use related fluxes including carbon storage in landfills, use of 20-year vs. 100-year global warming potentials, etc.)?

How do the costs of the various materials flow pathways compare, both for recyclers and local governments?
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What market factors drive the cost effectiveness of various materials flow pathways in a given location/situation?
7 Recovery options for materials with high
8 greenhouse gas impacts but weak recycling markets
Life cycle analyses of organics diversion and disposal strategies

What options exist or are under consideration for recycling, recovering energy from, and creating viable reuse markets for such materials as carpet, engineered wood, plastic films, foams, etc?

What barriers exist to recycling and energy recovery and what are the costs associated with any existing alternatives?
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What GHG reduction benefits could be expected given an increase in the rate of recycling or energy recovery of such materials?
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What (ideally quantitative or semi-quantitative) life cycle analyses are available to compare the GHG benefits and impacts of composting, anaerobic digestion, other energy recovery technologies, and landfill disposal?
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Are such analyses complete or comparable? Where are they lacking?

How sensitive are the results (identification of optimal vs. sub-optimal pathways) to different local conditions as well as different modeling assumptions (e.g. energy displaced by waste-to-energy, treatment of land-use related fluxes including carbon storage in landfills, use of 20-year vs. 100-year global warming potentials, etc.)?

Which portions of the lifecycle of these strategies are not accounted for in current analyses and therefore lead to possibly skewed comparisons in current literature and policy?
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9 Economic price elasticity and product pricing
For Solid Waste Management Systems:

How elastic are waste volume, recycling rate of businesses and households, and overall GHG emissions in response to varying prices of solid waste management services? What is the nature of the factors that influence this curve?
For a “Price on Carbon”:

How elastic are waste volume, recycling rate of businesses and households, and overall GHG emissions in response to varying prices of carbon (assuming the price of carbon is being applied to the entire lifecycle of materials, not merely the waste management portion of the lifecycle).

How would consumer product prices vary if a cost of carbon associated with manufacturing and disposal were included in the price of manufacture?
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What is the nature of the factors that influence these mathematical relationships?
10 Carbon balance and dynamics of landfills and compost applications
Regarding Methane Flux:

What do the studies reveal about methane flux from landfills and what do we still need to find out?
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Are current measurements of methane flux from landfills accurate or reliable? How so or not?
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What methods are best or should be developed for measuring this flux?
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What factors influence the methane flux for a given landfill, and which is associated with the greatest measurement-, sampling/analytical- or method uncertainty?
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How does methane flux relate to methane generation?
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How does methane generation (both absolute generation and timing) vary between different waste types and different landfill conditions?
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What are the most reliable measurements for methane flux available?
Regarding Carbon Storage:
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What do the studies reveal about carbon storage in landfills and in compost soil applications and what do we still need to find out?

Are current estimates or measurements of carbon storage at landfills and in compost applications accurate or reliable? How so or not?
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Are we able to make meaningful comparisons between carbon storage in landfills versus those in compost soil applications? If not, what would allow us to do so?
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What methods are best or should be developed for measuring or estimating carbon storage? What issues and degree of uncertainty is associated with each?
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