Image courtesy of FPI
The Foodservice Packaging Institute (FPI), Falls Church, Virginia, has released its revamped Resident Education Kit. The free resource is designed to make recycling outreach about cups and take-out containers easier, faster and more effective for communities nationwide, empowering municipalities, haulers and recycling advocates to run professional, locally tailored campaigns without the need for extra staff or budget.
FPI says it has enabled more than 8.4 million U.S. households to recycle common food service packaging, including plastic cups and containers, paper cups, paper bags, pizza boxes and aluminum trays, by working across the recycling supply chain to confirm these items can be effectively sorted, processed and marketed. The updated Resident Education Kit builds on this mission, offering flexible marketing materials communities of all sizes can customize to their local guidelines, language and branding.
“Communities generate measurable volumes of cups, containers, boxes and paper bags each year,” says FPI President Natha Dempsey. “Ensuring take-out containers are recovered effectively is a priority to FPI members, and a key part of that success depends on residents understanding the full range of foodservice packaging items they can recycle. Our updated Resident Education Kit will help in this effort.”
The free kit includes customizable templates with bilingual graphics that can be tailored with a free Canva account to match local recycling rules and branding and comprehensive communication tools such as press release templates, FAQs, messaging best practices and more to streamline campaigns.
“This kit removes the two biggest barriers for communities trying to improve recycling outreach—time and resources,” Dempsey says. “Now, any community can launch a polished, professional campaign that actually moves the needle on recycling participation.”
Over the years, FPI says it has partnered with more than 28 communities and material recovery facilities (MRFs) to develop tailored recycling outreach materials, creating campaign assets from the ground up. This approach has delivered strong results and remains a valuable option for communities pursuing larger-scale campaigns through FPI’s Community Partnership program. The updated kit builds on that foundation, empowering communities to take the lead with ready-to-use tools they can adapt on their own, the organization says. This approach speeds the process, expands access and gives communities the confidence to launch impactful food service packaging recycling campaigns.
“We first partnered with FPI in 2017 and still use the resources we developed together through the campaign, but the updated Resident Education Kit makes it easy to create new outreach materials,” says Karen Maynard, solid waste education manager from Louisville, Kentucky. “The kit is well-done and thoughtfully put together. The Canva templates look fantastic, and it was easy to add my department logos. These are exactly the kind of tools that make life easier for people with busy schedules like mine.”
The Resident Education Kit is available at www.recyclefsp.org/resident-education-kit. Municipalities, nonprofits and recycling coordinators can start using the kit today to launch effective, tailored recycling campaigns, according to FPI. A free demo of the kit can be requested by contacting Maggie Orozco at morozco@recycle.com. Communities seeking larger-scale campaigns can apply for an FPI communications grant, which provides additional resources and advertising placements to maximize reach.