A waste-diversion target is only as good as the processing capacity behind it — diverting more than facilities can actually handle just backs the system up.
diverted = generated * diversion_rate * (processing_capacity headroom)
- Waste stream nodes — generation, collection, sorting and processing nodes in the waste network.
- Network connectivity — how directly sorted material reaches an available processing node.
- Diversion rate — share of waste actively diverted from landfill toward recycling/composting.
- Processing capacity — throughput of sorting and reprocessing facilities in the network.
Cities that paired higher diversion targets with matching processing capacity investment avoided the bottleneck that stalls many ambitious recycling programs elsewhere.