Sustainable materials management is the holistic notion for material stewardship that can be summed up succinctly as: use wisely, eliminate toxicity and recover more. This simplified look at material consumption provides us with a framework for examining materials used in society, including packaging material flows. As society grapples with material recovery and recycling from the municipal solid waste (MSW) stream, part of the story often overlooked is litter-the fraction of materials, often packaging, that end up in unintended places. How much do we actually know about litter? What do we know about its composition? About its magnitude in relation to material flow within the MSW stream? The psychology and demographics of the people involved in the transactions? How does litter fit within the sustainable materials management framework?
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