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Now Is the Time to Modernize the American Recycling System

Keefe Harrison

CEO, The Recycling Partnership

As the leading national nonprofit working toward a modernized American recycling system, The Recycling Partnership has been activating dynamic change in communities since 2014. The American recycling system is the foundation for designing a circular economy where products and packaging are increasingly recirculated through material supply chains with a goal of reducing greenhouse gases, enhancing the recycling economy, supporting jobs, and diminishing the impacts of a take-make-waste society.

The Recycling Partnership’s strategy for the next 18 months will focus on implementing smarter systems across the value chain, along with continuing to unlock supply of recyclable materials from communities, reducing contamination in local recycling systems, sparking innovation through material collaboratives to make more items commonly recycled, and working with elected leaders to ensure an even playing field for recycling and plans for improved infrastructure.

The current global pandemic has shined a light on just how loosely connected but highly dependent our recycling system is in the United States and has made clear the next steps needed to move toward the recycling system of the future. As The Recycling Partnership has stated in recent reports (i.e., the Bridge to Circularity and 2020 State of Curbside Recycling), fundamental underlying challenges require building a sustainably-funded and responsive future system in parallel to continued work on expanding and improving curbside recycling infrastructure. That is why The Recycling Partnership is advocating for transformative policy to ensure comprehensive funding that creates and sustains the system of the future.

See how The Recycling Partnership continues to transform for good, by visiting the official website.

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