Abitibi Recycling Touts Collection Program

At the National Recycling Congress today, Abitibi Recycling, supported by Skumatz Economic Research Associates, announced the results of a new study that finds Abitibi Recycling’s Paper Retriever program boosts municipal curbside recovery programs by an average of 4.5 percentage points at no additional cost to municipal-run recycling programs.

Abitibi Recycling released the new SERA study, The Paper Retriever Impact on Curbside Recycling, at the “Maximizing Diversion/Minimizing Dollars” session during the recently concluded NRC Congress. The study used 95 Paper Retriever communities and 125 non-Paper Retriever communities randomly selected nationwide.

The study determined the effect of Abitibi Recycling’s proprietary, community drop-off program on the recovery rates of municipal-run curbside programs. San Antonio’s Solid Waste Director, Dan Cardenas, further confirmed results with direct experience resulting from the introduction of Paper Retriever there eight years ago.

Moreover, when asked, the majority of city recycling officials (where Paper Retriever has been implemented) reported that Abitibi-Consolidated’s Paper Retriever program increased public recycling awareness. The company’s community drop-off Paper Retriever containers in the United States and Canada serve as either recycling destination points or opportunities “on way to where people are going” that remind people to recycle.

The program supplies recycling containers at no charge to schools, churches and other nonprofit organizations, and pays more than $2.5 million annually to those groups for paper recycled through their containers. The SERA study points out that cities are able to capitalize on Abitibi’s investment in education and awareness.