Collaboration awards $180,000 to Ohio grantees to improve drop-off recycling programs

A campaign focusing on improving the use of drop-off recycling locations in Athens-Hocking, Mahoning, Ottawa, Sandusky, and Seneca County solid waste management districts (SWMDs) will benefit more than 190,000 households in Ohio. 

To support this campaign, Ohio EPA is awarding $180,000 to build on curbside recycling projects that began in 2019. This year, Ohio EPA is issuing three grants to a strategically and geographically diverse group of SWMDs that represent six counties within Ohio. The goal is to improve education, outreach, and participation for drop-off recycling programs around the state. For this campaign, Ohio EPA is partnering with SWMDs, material recovery facilities, haulers, Ohio communities, and The Recycling Partnership (The Partnership) as the organizations work together to tackle the issue of non-recyclable materials such as trash and non-recyclable plastic in residential recycling programs.

“These grants are an investment in our communities,” Ohio EPA Director Anne M. Vogel said. “We want Ohio to be known for the reliability and quality of materials being recycled, which is a tremendously valuable resource for manufacturing throughout the nation and across the world. We are honored to work with The Recycling Partnership to advance that goal.”  

“Ohio EPA and The Recycling Partnership are working in collaboration with Ohio communities, SWMDs and Material Recovery Facilities to develop and implement a comprehensive education and outreach strategy to decrease the amount of trash in curbside recycling programs while increasing how much Ohioans recycle,” said Jill Martin, Director of Community Programs at The Recycling Partnership. “The Partnership will provide education and outreach tools used successfully in hundreds of communities around the nation to encourage Ohioans to participate in the recycling system and recycle only the materials that should be recycled.” 

In addition to the $180,000 awarded directly to the communities by Ohio EPA, Rumpke Waste & Recycling, and WM provided project funding support totaling $50,000, and the participating SWMDs contributed over $60,000 in matching funds. These funds will amplify the beneficial impacts of this campaign. The local projects will focus on decreasing contamination of recycling bins with non-recyclable materials, increasing capture of good quality recyclable materials, and improving participation in drop-off recycling programs. 

The need to improve the quality of recyclables is a high priority because it is estimated that 25 percent of items placed in recycling bins throughout the country is not suitable for recycling. Increasing participation and quality can strengthen local recycling systems. 

About The Recycling Partnership At The Recycling Partnership, we are solving for circularity. As a mission-driven NGO, we are committed to advancing a circular economy by building a better recycling system. We mobilize people, data, and solutions across the value chain to reduce waste and our impact on the environment while also unlocking economic benefits. We work on the ground with thousands of communities to transform underperforming recycling programs; we partner with companies to achieve packaging circularity, increase access to recycled materials, and meet sustainability commitments; and we work with government to develop policy solutions to address the systemic needs of our residential recycling system and advance a circular economy. We foster public-private partnerships and drive positive change at every step of the recycling and circularity process. Since 2014, we have diverted 770 million pounds of new recyclables from landfills, avoided more than 670,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases, and driven significant reductions in targeted contamination rates. Learn more at recyclingpartnership.org.

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epa.ohio.gov

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency was created in 1972 to consolidate efforts to protect and improve air quality, water quality and waste management in Ohio. Since then, air pollutants dropped by as much as 90 percent; large rivers meeting standards improved from 21 percent to 89 percent; and hundreds of polluting, open dumps were replaced with engineered landfills and an increased emphasis on waste reduction and recycling.