Community Engagement
SERVING CITIZENS NATIONWIDE
Advancing the recycling collection system to unlock supply from all U.S. homes is a core pillar of our work. We know that quality recyclables – the supply – are in the home, and recovering that supply is managed by cities, counties, and solid waste authorities. There are three words that define our philosophy as we support this system: action, collaboration, and scale.
In order to unlock supply at the scale the U.S. needs, we are reaching further, faster than ever. We have diversified our grant and resource development beyond individual towns, establishing strategic partnerships with United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regions, states, MRFs, haulers, and regional governments. We seek out creative solutions that lead to game-changing initiatives in the industry, unlocking supply of quality recyclables at a rapid and replicable scale. We are building a network of amazing people that manage and link critical aspects of the U.S. supply chain who, with the right tools, will continue to transform our recycling system and catalyze the circular economy.
This report presents a representative sample of our work using these principles.
Addressing Contamination
on the West Coast
In 2019, The Recycling Partnership launched the West Coast Contamination Initiative (WCCI) to work together with all recycling stakeholders in California, Oregon and Washington State to improve the quality of recyclables collected at the curb. The investments went toward gathering data, engaging with stakeholders, hosting workshops, and creating collateral specifically for the West Coast communities – extending The Partnership’s reach in a region where we previously had little to no presence.
The Recycling Partnership team connected with more than 300 recycling stakeholders in these states through in-person meetings and networking events. Our data-gathering efforts reached 212 cities and 98 MRFs, while also getting critical feedback from more than 3,000 citizens, giving us insight into key issues affecting the diverse stakeholders and identifying opportunities to meaningfully improve material quality.
West Coast Community Grant
Our first West Coast community grant will go to Spokane County, Washington to reduce unwanted materials in the recycling carts of more than 340,000 citizens.
As a result of this initiative, we will be giving out grants to communities on the West Coast looking to address contamination. Our first community grant will go to Spokane County, Washington to reduce unwanted materials in the recycling carts of more than 340,000 citizens.
Minnesota: Leveraging State-Wide Partnerships to Advance Multiple Communities at Once
In 2019, The Recycling Partnership capitalized on grant funding from the EPA to create change on a statewide level in Minnesota. Working with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), The Partnership created a statewide messaging campaign to raise citizens’ recycling IQs and incite more Minnesotans to participate in their local recycling program.
The turnkey element of the campaign was a basic list of what is and isn’t recyclable, which standardized “the basics” of what is and is not recyclable throughout the entirety of the state. This, along with a statewide communications plan, armed state recycling leaders to teach municipal recycling coordinators how to push the new messaging to their citizens. Resources for community recycling programs included educational videos, recycling quizzes, an annual info card to be mailed to all citizens, social posts, and more. The statewide campaign and corresponding resources were released during workshops at the Recycling Association of Minnesota’s annual conference. After the in-person trainings, The Partnership launched a website solely for state recycling coordinators to access the campaign materials. A series of pre-recorded webinars serve as an online tutorial for coordinators, who now have a home base from which to download and disperse resources to their communities.
As part of the EPA grant, five communities received seed grants to design and implement improved strategies for material capture in their multifamily recycling programs and measure the findings. Each of the five grantees – City of St. Paul, City of Minneapolis, University of Minnesota, Lyon County, and Pope Douglas County – focused on a different set of challenges for their multifamily communities – including outreach and messaging to property managers and information provided to citizens on existing recycling services available at their multifamily dwelling.
Continuing Regional Impacts Across New Jersey
Recycling is the norm in New Jersey and has been for many decades. However, recent market pressures have necessitated communities to revisit how their programs run and move toward a more efficient cart-based collection system.
As The Recycling Partnership began granting funds to select communities in the state, the success of the cart deployment caught the attention of the community next door. Neighboring towns – ready for the next level of investment and modernization – saw the success of The Partnership-supported rollout firsthand, leading to a domino effect of infrastructure granting opportunities across the state.
The Recycling Partnership has implemented six grant projects in New Jersey since January 2019 and expects to fund more in the coming year. As individual towns share their successes with one another, our community partners have turned into organic ambassadors for The Partnership model – leading to collective change across the state.
The effort in Vineland in particular illustrates how carts can inject a new level of performance into an already strong system. Prior to distributing carts, the City of Vineland’s curbside recycling program was collecting a robust 476 pounds per household per year. The distribution of carts and outreach materials helped propel the community to a new level of success, boosting annual program tonnage by nearly 21% and resulting in a post-cart collection rate of 575 pounds per household per year. Vineland’s experience with carts was so successful that its neighbor to the south, Millville, decided to make the same transition just over a year later.
Expanding Multifamily Recycling in Orlando, FL
In 2019 The Recycling Partnership started to take action on the largest source of potential new material supply and recycling access in the U.S.: multifamily households. One of the first projects was in the city of Orlando, Florida, with a population of approximately 270,000 and nearly 75,000 multifamily residential units. Orlando recently passed a mandatory commercial recycling ordinance that includes multifamily properties. The ordinance will be phased in over four years and the largest multifamily properties are required to comply by April 2020. The overall pilot project is comprised of three main actionable components:
Add local staff capacity by hiring a full time Multifamily Recycling Project Manager.
Develop effective recycling education/information interventions specific for Multifamily properties.
Conduct an in-depth waste and recycling audit on a select number of properties within the City.
The Partnership’s work with Orlando focuses on examining the impacts of a mandatory multifamily recycling ordinance to both expand collection to properties not yet recycling and utilize coordinated outreach material to improve recycling at properties that are currently recycling. Education and outreach elements from the project will be directed at all multifamily properties in the city. Orlando hired a full-time multifamily recycling coordinator in January 2020 and has provided web-based and in-person Open Houses for properties striving to comply with the new ordinance as well as working with The Partnership on design for education materials. The waste and recycling audit portion of this pilot have been delayed until approximately July 2020 due to COVID-19.
Based on The Partnership’s estimates, only 30-40% of multifamily units have access to recycling in the U.S., presenting a significant opportunity to establish best practices and unlock critical supply across the recycling system. The Partnership’s work in Orlando, San Marcos, TX, Atlanta, and other U.S. cities will help to establish best management practices and new tools that can be implemented on a larger scale with future community partners.