Arizona Agency Awards More than $1M to Boost Recycling

Steve Owens, the director of the state of Arizona’s Department of Environmental Quality, awarded $1.2 million in contracts to fund 13 recycling programs. The projects are geared to assist and promote recycling in the state.

Since 1991 the ADEQ has awarded about $11.3 million to improve recycling levels in the state.

"In the past 11 years ADEQ has made great strides to improve recycling opportunities for Arizona citizens," Owens said. "These awards have provided the seed money to start many community recycling programs, and we continue to look for innovative ways to increase the volume and types of recyclable materials that can be diverted from landfills in our state."

Owens cited Arizona's near doubling of curbside recycling collection programs - from 15 cities and towns in 1991 to 28 in 2002 - as evidence the program is having its intended effect. During the same time, the amount of materials recycled in Arizona has increased from 70,500 tons to 999,000 tons.

In addition, many communities are now offering household hazardous waste and electronic recycling collection events to their residents, Owens said.

ADEQ awards projects in three specific categories:

Waste Reduction Assistance: a program to provide Arizona residents with funding assistance to promote recycling opportunities in their community.

Recycling Research and Development: funding with the primary focus of developing ideas that will help divert significant amounts of material from the solid waste stream.

Waste Reduction Initiative Through Education: educating and promoting recycling opportunities to increase awareness of properly reducing and disposing of solid waste.

The 2004 recipients are:

Waste Reduction Assistance Projects:

Arizona State Parks, La Paz and Mohave Counties -- $187,356 for the Arizona State Parks Western Region Recycling Collection Centers. The center will establish recycling collection centers at four western state parks for visitor and community use.

C&M Fiber, Mohave County -- $76,225 for a MRF in Kingman, Ariz. C&M will establish a small to medium-sized materials recovery facility to service the greater Kingman area. The materials to be collected include aluminum and steel cans, cardboard, newspaper, mixed paper and plastics (#1 and #2). Funding will be used to purchase a horizontal baler to process materials. C&M plans to divert 2,000 tons of solid waste from the local landfill.

City of Nogales, Santa Cruz County -- $195,000 for a curbside recycling program. The city of Nogales will implement a new citywide commingled curbside recycling program for its single family homes, as well as provide recycling containers to schools and commercial customers using the city's established waste collection routes.

The funds will pay for 6,000 recycling containers. The city will also modify three of its collection trucks by adding hydraulic lifters to automate collection. The materials to be collected include glass, plastics (#1 and #2), paper, newspaper, aluminum, steel and tin cans. The city is partnering with Santa Cruz County, the Superintendent of Nogales Public Schools and various non-profit organizations to educate the community. Nogales expects to divert 38.9 percent of its waste stream from the local landfill.

City of Surprise, Maricopa County -- $195,000 to start a curbside program in Surprise, Ariz. The city of Surprise will implement a citywide curbside recycling program. Funding will be used to help purchase 19,000 recycling bins, one for each single-family home in the city. The materials to be collected include newspaper, cardboard, paper, plastics (#1 and #2), aluminum and steel cans. The city estimates that 20 to 30 percent or 7,651 to 11,477 tons of its waste stream will be diverted from the area's landfill.

City of Surprise, Maricopa County -- $128,000 for a Northwest Regional HHW Event. Northwest valley communities including Surprise, El Mirage, Youngtown, Sun City, Sun City West, Circle City, Morristown, Waddell and Whitmann will contract with a hazardous waste managing consultant to develop and produce three regional household hazardous waste collection events.

The HHW events, which will be the first for this area of Maricopa County, are tentatively scheduled for October in Sun City, November in Surprise and April in El Mirage. Materials collected at each event include paint, batteries, used oil, electronic waste and tires.

Funding will be used to pay the contractor for the proper recycling and/or disposal of the materials collected. The partnership estimates a total of 100 tons of hazardous waste will be recycled or disposed of properly as a result of these events.

Gila County Solid Waste -- $18,000 for a hazardous products collection program in several communities. Gila County will sponsor its first hazardous waste collection event for the communities of Globe, Miami, Hayden, Winkelman, Roosevelt, Tonto Basin and the San Carlos Reservation.

Gila County will develop the media campaign to promote the event. Funding will be used to pay a contractor for the proper recycling and/or disposal of the materials collected. In addition to accepting the traditional household hazardous waste materials, the county will set up a "drop 'n' swap" table where participants will be able to take home household products such as cleansers and gardening chemicals that were dropped off earlier in the event.

Based on a similar collection event in Payson, Arizona, Gila County expects 12.5 tons of potentially polluting household hazardous waste will be diverted from the county's landfills.

Pinal County Public Works -- $147,956 for an expansion center plan at Pinal County’s recycling center. Pinal County Public Works will expand its recycling center by upgrading the equipment, facility and manpower, enabling it to offer recycling to residents at nine new recycling drop-off locations.

These locations include: Gold Canyon, Johnson Ranch, Cactus Forest, Superior, Kearny, the Florence correctional facility, Rancho Eldorado, Maricopa and Eloy. The county will collect newspaper, mixed paper, cardboard, aluminum cans and PET and HDPE plastics.

Funding will be used to purchase recycling equipment. More than 60,000 additional county residents will have an opportunity to recycle and the county expects to divert an additional 40,000 cubic yards of material.

Santa Cruz County -- $130,747 to build  a Santa Cruz County MRF and Cardboard Recycling program. Santa Cruz County will provide its residents with the opportunity to recycle cardboard and electronic equipment and will construct a small materials recovery facility.

Electronic waste and cardboard recycling will be added to recycling opportunities already being offered by the county in Tubac, Patagonia and Sonoita. Funding will be used to purchase recycling equipment. Santa Cruz expects to divert 6,900 tons of material each year through the expanded program.

Sedona Recycles, Yavapai County -- $64,337 to purchase a large capacity baler.

Sedona Recycles will purchase a larger baler to increase its materials recovery facility's capacity to recycle material generated in Sedona and the Verde Valley.

The new equipment will be used to process recyclable materials collected in the growing curbside recycling programs offered by the area's private hauling companies. The materials processed by Sedona Recycles include newspaper, cardboard, glass, plastics, steel cans and aluminum. Sedona expects to divert approximately 460 additional tons of recycled material.

Research and Development Projects:

Universal Entech, LLC, Maricopa County -- $49,726 to assist in commercializing cellulose processing. Universal Entech (UE) plans to commercialize the process of changing cellulose from the waste stream into ethanol. In this proposed step of the commercialization process, UE will develop a pilot scale converter for low-grade paper only. In later steps they hope to increase the size of the converter to commercial grade and convert other cellulose materials, such as yard waste, and wood waste.

Waste Reduction Initiative Through Education Projects:

DNA-People's Legal Services, Inc., Apache County -- $7,800 "Walk in Beauty?" -A Public Awareness Campaign By DNA Legal.

DNA - People's Legal Services, Inc. will produce and implement a mass media campaign titled "Walk in Beauty?" This campaign is designed to encourage recycling and proper waste disposal in the Navajo Nation through a series of educational public service announcements on television and radio. The campaign is designed to raise awareness among Navajo language speakers about the benefits of recycling and the environmental consequences of illegal dumping. The PSAs will be in the Navajo and Hopi languages. DNA partners include KRMH and KTNN radio stations, Navajo Nation TV5 and former Navajo Nation President Peterson Zah.

Arizona State Parks, La Paz and Mohave County -- $20,140 for an educational program. Arizona State Parks will increase the awareness of and participation in waste reduction efforts through development of guided interpretive and self-guided media at four Arizona state parks.

The parks include Lake Havasu State Park, Cattail Cove State Park, Buckskin Mountain State Park and Alamo Lake State Park. Arizona State Parks will develop an education curriculum for park ranger-led programs, by designing and creating training programs using informational kiosks and signs.

City of Suprise, Maricopa County -- $25,750 to help city design an education web site to go along with the city’s curbside recycling program.