pre-consumer vs post-consumer recycled content

This past weekend I was flipping through the March 2010 edition of Metropolis and came across an advertisement for a new line of San Fransisco bus shelter.

As eye candy, it was in line with the rest of the magazine, but read some of the copy and you see they are trying to sell it as “sustainable”.

Apparently the material they used for the red, translucent top is 3form’s Koda XT, which according to the the website: is made with 40% pre-consumer recycled content and is the only architectural polycarbonate material available to use towards LEED MR 4.1 for recycled content.

For me, this begged the question: what is pre-consumer recycled content, and how is it different from post-consumer recycled content?

From BuildingGreen

Recycled content refers to the portion of materials used in a product that have been diverted from the solid waste stream. If those materials are diverted during the manufacturing process, they are be referred to as pre-consumer recycled content (sometimes referred to as post-industrial). If they are diverted after consumer use, they are post-consumer.

While it’s certainly a good thing to find a use for your scrap, it’s hardly “sustainable”. All the manufacturer is doing is making the most out of their virgin material which, while both good & technically “re-cycling”, does not deserve the goodwill that they engender by using the term “recycle”, even if they qualify it with “pre-consumer“.

Even if one were to argue it is recycling (using the broadest definition of the term), it is undeniably unsustainable. It is a byproduct of a a process that relies on virgin material (otherwise it would be post-consumer) and as such is unable to be sustained.

It’s a good-looking bus shelter, but don’t try to take standard processes you are already using and try to weasel through the semantics so that you can classify it as sustainable.

And with weak requirements for LEED credits like MR 4.1 (post-consumer + 1/2 pre-consumer > 5%) , it’s no wonder you see so much LEED bashing.

Is there some hidden benefit of pre-consumer recycling that I’m not seeing? Say something.

for the record, I think LEED is a solid step in the right direction, but much more needs to be done.