The Environmental Protection Agency today is amending the May 1, 1995 Comprehensive Procurement Guideline (CPG). EPA is designating 18 new items that are or can be made with recovered materials. These items are carpet cushion; flowable fill; railroad grade crossing surfaces; park benches and picnic tables; playground equipment; food waste compost; plastic lumber landscaping timbers and posts; solid plastic binders; plastic clipboards; plastic file folders; plastic clip portfolios; plastic presentation folders; sorbents (i.e., absorbents and adsorbents); industrial drums; awards and plaques; mats; signage; and manual-grade strapping. The CPG implements section 6002 of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and section 502 of Executive Order 13101, which require EPA to designate items that are or can be made with recovered materials and to recommend practices that procuring agencies can use to procure designated items. Once EPA designates an item, any procuring agency that uses appropriated Federal funds to procure that item must purchase the item containing the highest percentage of recovered materials practicable. Today's action will use government purchasing power to stimulate the use of these materials in the manufacture of new products, thereby, fostering markets for materials recovered from solid waste. RCRA section 6002 provides certain limited exceptions to the general requirement to buy EPA-designated items. Under certain circumstances based on competition, price, availability, and performance, RCRA section 6002 does not require that procuring agencies purchase an item designated by EPA. In the May 1, 1995 CPG, EPA codified the RCRA section 6002 procurement requirements for the convenience of procuring agencies so they could find all of the RCRA section 6002 procurement provisions, as well as EPA's item designations, in one location. You can find these requirements at 40 CFR Part 247.