America Recycles Day: Millions Recycle from Coast to Coast During the summer of 2009, Keep America Beautiful took ownership of America Recycles Day and hosted one of the most successful days in the event’s history. America Recycles Day (ARD), a nationally-recognized initiative dedicated to encouraging Americans to recycle and to buy recycled products, has grown to include millions of Americans pledging to increase their recycling habits at home and at work. In its 13th year, America Recycles Day (which takes place on Nov. 15) has grown into a movement with organizers holding events
throughout the month to educate, motivate and inspire others to recycle. From elementary students who learned about the basics of recycling in their classrooms, to community organizers who coordinated electronics drives for their neighbors, people around the country united around the practice of recycling. The 2009 theme was “It All Comes Back to You,” a reminder that each person’s simple choices and actions have a larger impact on the world. In total, 750 registered organizations conducted a total of 2,375 events that involved over 7,700 local participating groups.
RecycleMania: The Premier Collegiate Recycling Competition RecycleMania is a friendly competition and benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities on their campuses. Over a 10-week period, schools compete in multiple categories measuring everything from how much paper they recycle to how little per capita waste they generate. Students can watch how their results compare to other schools and use this to rally their campus communities. RecycleMania provides KAB with an opportunity to support a national program that can only heighten awareness of our organization among college students. More than 600 colleges and universities participated in the 2010 competition, with participants recycling or composting over 84 million pounds of material during the competition. From Port-
land State University in Oregon to Pellissippi State Community College in Tennessee, millions of students and staff members chipped in to make the 2010 competition a great success. Keep America Beautiful heightened its effort to reach a new audience of young adults by announcing its involvement in RecycleMania 2010 as a partner organization managing the competition in coordination with the RecycleMania Steering Committee and the U.S. EPA WasteWise program.
RecycleMania is made possible through the sponsorship support of The Coca-Cola Company, American Forest & Paper Association and Keep America Beautiful. To see the complete 2010 rankings, visit RecycleManiacs.org.
In addition, four cities—San Diego, Rochester, N.Y., Waco, Texas, and Columbia, S.C.—hosted “shopping sprees” to highlight products that might be recycled locally or are packaged in materials made of recycled content. In 2009, America Recycles Day was sponsored by the American Chemistry Council and Nestlé Waters North America. Because of their generous support, all registrants who listed their events online were able to download promotional and educational material for their events.
Cans for Cash: City Recycling Challenge The U.S. Conference of Mayors, Novelis Inc. and KAB announced the winners of the sixth annual “Cans for Cash: City Recycling Challenge” at the U.S. Conference of Mayors 78th Winter Meeting in Washington, D.C. The “Challenge” pits cities of comparable sizes in a competition of creativity and execution, offering monetary awards to the cities that conduct the most innovative campaigns and collect the most aluminum cans. During October 2009, more than 40 cities collected over 125 million used beverage cans. Additionally, the Challenge rewarded creative partnerships between cities and local affiliates of Keep America Beautiful. The campaign awards the winning city $5,000 and the local KAB affiliate $2,500. The 2009 campaign categories were modified to
Cans for Cash: KAB Affiliate Winners • First Place: Montgomery, Ala. – Mayor Todd Strange/Montgomery Clean City Commission • Second Place: LaGrange, Ga. – Mayor Jeff Lukken/Keep Troup Beautiful • Third Place: Angleton, Texas – Mayor Patrick Henry/Keep Angleton Beautiful • Fourth Place: Newport News, Va. – Mayor Joe Frank/Newport News Public Works Recycling
improve opportunities for smaller-size cities and encourage more innovative campaigns to promote aluminum can recycling. The Most Cans Collected category was determined by the ratio of the city population to the total pounds of cans recycled.
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