Recycled Content: What is it and What is it Worth?

Recycled content is the most widely cited attribute of green building products. Numerous federal, state, and local government agencies have “buy recycled” programs aimed at increasing markets for recycled materials—these programs typically have an explicit goal of supporting recycling programs to reduce solid-waste disposal. A handful of programs claim to target environmentally preferable purchasing in a broader sense, yet in practice they focus almost exclusively on recycled content because that attribute is ostensibly easy to define and measure. But even this relatively quantifiable attribute can be tricky to document, and its presumed environmental benefits have rarely been tested.