Advice provided by: Sarah Gudeman, LEED AP, EIT, Morrissey Engineering, Inc.

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Recycled content goes by many names: Pre-industrial, post-industrial, pre-consumer and post-consumer. These are all labels that seem to be thrown around a lot and, often enough, the terms are used incorrectly. Apparently it’s no longer enough to know that some product was made of recycled materials but now for consumers, as well as building design professionals (especially when LEED is concerned), it’s necessary to know at what stage in the material’s usage process the product was recycled and in what particular quantity.

Recyclable materials include various types of glass, paper, metal, plastic, textiles and even electronics. However, just because a product carries the recycling symbol doesn’t necessarily mean it was made from recycled materials (or even that it is recyclable) either. Remember that this logo is not regulated by law and its use is therefore highly subjective.

A recycled-content product includes materials that were recycled. The recycled materials are simply those items that have been diverted and recovered from the traditional waste-stream (most commonly landfills).

So when you’re shopping, pondering which product contains the most recycled material, the first thing you might gravitate towards considering is the percentage of recycled material: the higher the percentage, the better. However, you should also be looking to see if the recycled material is listed as post-consumer, because this means it was at the end of its intended life and headed for the landfill.

Post Consumer Recycled Material

Post-consumer material is defined as waste materials generated by households or by commercial, industrial and institutional facilities in their role as end-users of a product, which can no longer be used for its initial purpose.

And while the most sustainable process would be to generate a new product from an old one (using recycled printer paper to make new printer paper is one example), the costs and processes required for that type of recycling often aren’t justifiable. So most often, one material is reused to produce something different (using old printer paper to make paperboard, for example).

Post-industrial and Pre-consumer vs. Post-consumer

Recently the use of the term ‘post-industrial’ has increased, (in a marketing effort I think) to associate it with post-consumer content. But the differentiation is very important because post-industrial is essentially the same thing as pre-consumer. Pre-consumer recycled material is recycled from manufacturing waste such as planer shavings, glass cullet, sawdust, etc.

In terms of percentages, the higher the quantity of recovered material, the greater the amount of waste diverted from disposal, so 100% post-consumer recycled material would be the ideal goal. But use of any quantity of recovered material is preferable to utilizing virgin resources.

Finally, products that are recyclable (those that can be collected and remanufactured themselves) are desirable as well but only benefit the environment if people recycled them after use. A recyclable aluminum can or plastic bottle is no longer a benefit if it just ends up in a landfill.

Related Advice:

• Post Consumer vs. Pre-Industrial Recycled Content: What's the Difference?



• Post Industrial Recycled Content: Where Can I Find Information on Products?



• Recycled Paper Insulation: Sustainable Products from Old Newsprint?