Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO examined various aspects of federal agencies' wastepaper recycling activities, focusing on: (1) the extent to which agencies implemented a legislative mandate to encourage wastepaper recovery and establish recycling programs; (2) the causes of agencies' shortcomings in implementing those responsibilities; and (3) obstacles to expanding federal recycling efforts.
GAO found that: (1) most federal agencies did not have wastepaper recovery programs and had not conducted the required analyses to justify the absence of such programs; (2) most General Services Administration (GSA) regional offices were trashing wastepaper rather than selling it for recycling purposes; (3) the governmentwide wastepaper recycling program that GSA and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) initiated in response to the legislative mandate was adversely affected by budget cuts, lack of aggressive management and monitoring, poor contract administration, and employee apathy; (4) EPA did not issue guidelines for the procurement of recycled paper until a lawsuit forced the issuance of the guidelines; (5) although the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) was required to report biennially to Congress on agencies' progress in implementing guidelines, it had only submitted two such reports since 1981; and (6) obstacles to agencies' establishment, maintenance, and expansion of recycling programs included the widespread perception that such programs were not cost-effective, lack of adequate storage space to hold accumulated wastepaper, and program costs.
