Celebrating 10 Years of Impact, The Recycling Partnership Delivers 2 Millionth Recycling Cart to Colorado Community

SEATTLE (Waste Advantage): At its inaugural summit: Pivot: Scale to Impact, The Recycling Partnership announced the delivery of its 2 millionth recycling cart in Fort Collins, Colorado made possible by a $664,000 Recycling Partnership grant to the city of Fort Collins with financial support from the American Beverage Association’s “Every Bottle Back” initiative and the Colorado Beverage Association. This milestone is a testament to The Recycling Partnership’s continued dedication to building a better recycling system and making recycling more accessible for communities across the country. 

“Our data shows us that 8 in 10 Americans believe recycling has a positive impact, yet only 43% participate due to a lack of access or engagement, which is why we are committed to making recycling easier for people who want to recycle,” said Cody Marshall, Chief System Optimization Officer at The Recycling Partnership. “It only took us three years to jump from our first million to two million carts placed, accelerating our rate of progress. This milestone is a signal that both communities and companies are committed to investing in recycling.” 

The Recycling Partnership works with communities and recycling facilities, including materials recovery facilities (MRFs), processors, and secondary processors, across the U.S. to improve access, collections, operations, and processing through a variety of grant and technical assistance opportunities. To provide these grants, The Partnership works with companies like the American Beverage Association. Over its five-year engagement, The Partnership has awarded more than 50 grants including placing carts, enhancing multifamily recycling, providing recycling education, and improving processing at MRFs. 

Since 2014, The Recycling Partnership has delivered grants to purchase recycling carts across more than 110 communities across the U.S., including: 

•          Florence, Alabama, 2014: a $420,000 grant to purchase 14,527 new recycling carts. Notably, The Partnership’s first cart grant. 
•          Big Bear, California, 2021: a $242,000 grant to purchase 10,263 recycling carts. 
•          Baltimore, Maryland, 2021: a $1,850,000 grant to purchase 171,250 recycling carts. 
•          New Orleans, Louisiana, 2022: a $404,830 grant to purchase 6,700 recycling carts. 
•          Kansas City, Missouri, 2022: a $1.5 million grant to purchase 161,238 recycling carts. 
•          State of Michigan, 2015 – present: a partnership with the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Environment has delivered 245,000 recycling carts across more than 30 Michigan communities.

“This impressive milestone shows that with investment, modernization, and partnership, recycling in America can work. With The Recycling Partnership’s leadership, America’s beverage companies are proud to have supported nearly half of the recycling carts delivered to Americans through our Every Bottle Back initiative,” said Megan Daum, Vice President of Policy at American Beverage. “And we’re just getting started. We look forward to building on this success in communities across the country so that materials—like our valuable bottles and cans—can be remade as intended.”   

Through The Recycling Partnership’s wide range of grant opportunities, the organization provides communities with funding, technical assistance, as well as education and outreach materials to help build a better recycling system through recycling access, participation, capture, and processing of valuable materials ready for purchase by end markets.  

In its first ten years, The Recycling Partnership has granted over $72 million to 473 grantees in communities nationwide to improve access, collections, operations, and processing through various targeted investments to improve recycling rates. As a result of The Partnership’s impactful work, the organization has successfully diverted 1 billion incremental tons of recyclables, avoided 1.4 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in addition to placing 2 million recycling carts nationwide. The five-year collaboration with the American Beverage Association, specifically, has resulted in more than $18 million distributed across more than 50 projects.  

Courtesy: www.wasteadvantagemag.com