Recycled Content Products
Section 6002 of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) established the Federal buy-recycled program. EPA designates recycled content products in the Comprehensive Procurement Guidelines (CPG) and provides recommendations for purchasing the products in Recovered Materials Advisory Notices (RMANs). The recommendations primarily pertain to the levels of recycled materials that the designated products should contain, but EPA also identifies relevant government and consensus specifications (e.g., ASTM standards). To date, EPA has designated 54 products in the following 8 categories:

• Paper and Paper Products
• Vehicular Products
• Construction Products
• Transportation Products
• Park and Recreation Products
• Landscaping Products
• Non-paper Office Products
• Miscellaneous

On April 30, 2004, EPA designated seven addtional recycled content products: modular threshold ramps, non-pressure pipe, roofing materials, office furniture, rebuilt vehicular parts, bike racks, and blasting grit. The requirement to buy these products containing recycled materials kicks in on May 2, 2005.

To learn more about EPA's program and the designated products, visit http://www.epa.gov/cpg/index.htm or see the latest Comprehensive Procurement Guideline.

RCRA requires Federal agencies to purchase the EPA-designated products and to establish Affirmative Procurement Programs (APP) consisting of 4 elements: preference program, promotion program, vendor certification of recycled content, and annual review and monitoring. A more comprehensive overview can be found in the Task Force's Model APP.

Many Federal agencies have established web-based affirmative procurement programs and/or have electronic versions of related agency policies.

The Task Force provides information about government and commercial sources of re-refined oil, the retreads qualified by the Army's Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command, and the copier paper sources qualified by the Government Printing Office.