Over the past couple decades, the very concept of recycling rates has become badly abused, so much so that I have colleagues that have called for their outright end. In part this is because somewhere along the line they stopped being a benchmarking tool (for which they are quite valuable), and started being the end-all goal for how programs were designed, expanded, and judged.

Recycling benchmarking is near and dear to me. Long before STARS, or RecycleMania, or even the EPA's WasteWise comparison, I had developed systems using recycling rates as an inter-campus benchmarking tool, both at the local and national level, and was traveling the country teaching folks how to use recycling rate comparisons to improve their recycling and sustainable materials management program.

If you are new to recycling metrics, or view recycling benchmarking just as a minor subsection of your STARS report, I urge you check out my latest blog posts. I think this is enough of a critical issue to the future of recycling and sustainable materials management programs, that I have dedicated several posts to it, the first couple of which we have up on line already.

http://blog.max-r.net/2011/10/27/how-do-you-measure-up/

http://blog.max-r.net/2011/11/01/understanding-metrics/

Hope this helps.