Delaware Awards $50,000 in Grants to Increase Recycling

The Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control and the Governor's Recycling Public Advisory Council have awarded a total of $50,000 in Recycling Assistance Grants for fiscal year 2006 to fund proposals from three schools, a museum and the city of Wilmington.

Wilmington received a grant of nearly $25,000 to help cover the administrative and outreach costs of implementing a pilot curbside recycling program serving approximately 8,000 households. The city is partnering with RecycleBank, a Philadelphia-based company that has developed an innovative incentive program that rewards people for recycling. When a resident's recyclables are picked up, they are weighed, and the household is rewarded in the form of discount coupons redeemable at many local businesses such as supermarkets, restaurants, jewelry stores, pharmacies and movie theaters. The program is designed for convenience and uses single-stream collection. If the pilot is successful, the city will expand the program to include all Wilmington residents.

Other projects receiving grants are:

• The University of Delaware - $15,000 to conduct composting education in schools and other group settings;
• Delaware Academy of Science/Iron Hill Museum - $5,400 to conduct recycling outreach in elementary schools;
• Mt. Pleasant Band Boosters Association - $3,000 to expand its aluminum recycling program, with a goal of doubling the amount of aluminum collected in the previous year; and
• Middletown High School - $2,200 to implement a paper recycling program at the school, with a goal of recycling 80 percent of the scrap paper currently going to landfill.

The Recycling Assistance Grant Program is a matching grant program in which recipients must provide at least 25 percent of the total project cost in either cash or in-kind contributions. Funding for the program is subject to annual authorization by the Delaware General Assembly. If funding is authorized for Fiscal Year 2007, DNREC will announce the availability of grant money during the fall of 2006, with applications due by Jan. 31, 2007.

Additional information on the grant program is available from Janet Manchester with the Solid and Hazardous Waste Management Branch at (302) 739-9403.