House Appropriators Signal Support for National Recycling Needs Survey and Assessment

Leading circular economy change agent welcomes call for nationwide recycling assessment to inform and strengthen residential recycling.

July 10, 2020

2 Min Read
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FALLS CHURCH, Va. (July 9, 2020) – The Recycling Partnership applauds the House Appropriations Committee for including a nationwide Recycling Needs Survey and Assessment in its report language released today. The Partnership thanks House Appropriations Interior and Environment Subcommittee Chair McCollum, Ranking Member Joyce, the entire subcommittee, and Rep. Schrier for identifying this foundational need for the recycling industry. 

These funds will benefit communities across the country by identifying the resources needed to ensure that it’s as easy for Americans to recycle as it is to throw something away. Specifically, the assessment will help to identify the challenges and opportunities they are facing including: access to curbside recycling; contamination rates (rate of trash in recycling); and the amount of residential materials that are recycled. 

“We applaud the Committee for recognizing the need for greater data in order to strengthen recycling programs across the country,” said Elizabeth Biser, The Recycling Partnership’s Vice President of Policy & Public Affairs. “The Recycling Needs Survey and Assessment will serve as an important first step, helping to identify and prioritize investments and improvements to capture the full economic value of recycling.”

“While this is welcome progress, there is additional work to be done. We urge Congress to finalize the appropriations for the assessment, and support community recycling through measures such as the RECYCLE Act,” Biser continued.

To date, The Recycling Partnership has served more than 1,500 communities and counting with best-in-class tools, data, resources, and technical support, helped place more than 700,000 recycling carts, reached 74 million American households, and helped companies and communities invest more than $53 million in recycling infrastructure. 

The Recycling Partnership is looking forward to continuing to serve as a resource to Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency as they move forward with creating and conducting the assessment. The resulting data will be critical in modernizing American recycling infrastructure, achieving consistent collection across the nation, and capturing the value of materials for the circular economy.

About The Recycling Partnership 

The Recycling Partnership is a national nonprofit organization that leverages corporate partner funding to transform recycling for good in states, cities, and communities nationwide. As the only organization in the country that engages the full recycling supply chain from the corporations that manufacture products and packaging to local governments charged with recycling to industry end markets, haulers, material recovery facilities, and converters. Since 2014, the nonprofit change agent diverted 230 million pounds of new recyclables from landfills, saved 465 million gallons of water, avoided more than 250,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases, and drove significant reductions in targeted contamination rates. Learn more at www.recyclingpartnership.org

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