EPA grants a chance to adopt standardized recycling labels, says nonprofit

As part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced $75 million in grant opportunities for communities and organizations to educate the public about recycling by creating labels and signage for recycling and compost bins, as well as other communication and education tools aimed at increasing recycling levels and decreasing contamination in the recycling stream.

Industry leaders and Congress are urging the EPA to implement standardized labeling to help meet the goal it articulated in its National Recycling Strategy to “improve consistency of labels for recycling, compost and trash bins.”

The Minneapolis-based nonprofit organization Recycle Across America (RAA) is offering grant applicants the ability to use standardized recycling labels for recycling bins and its corresponding “Let’s Recycle Right!” public service campaign as part of that strategies. The campaign announces the use of standardized labels, features celebrity spokespersons, sea life and wildlife, as well as universal tips for recycling.

Interested parties that would like to use RAA’s standardized label solution and “Let’s Recycling Right!” campaign in their EPA grant applications should send a message to info@recycleacrossamerica.org to meet the EPA grant deadline of Jan. 16.

By using RAA’s standardized labeling system, grant applicants could save themselves the cost and time it takes to design labels and a communication campaign and spend more time and money expanding and implementing their grant project. RAA offers these solutions to all applicants while adhering to the procurement requirements defined by the EPA.

How it works

Since RAA created its societywide standardized labeling system for recycling bins in 2009, the standardized labels consistently have increased recycling levels and decreased contamination by making it easy for people to understand how to recycle properly wherever they are, similar to the way consistently designed road signs help people drive properly wherever they are, the organization says.

Understanding that recycling systems often differ from one community to the next, RAA says it can create standardized labels to accommodate every unique recycling system in the country. While adhering to standardized colors, fonts and layouts, each label communicates the specific materials accepted by the material recovery facility (MRF) serving a given area in the same way that standardized speed limit signs communicate different speed limits from one road to the next in a consistent format. Brands and contact information also can be added to the labels and they are created to fit every bin, cart, dumpster and lid for indoor and outdoor applications.

Adoption and effectiveness

To date, more than 9 million RAA standardized labels are displayed on recycling and compost bins, carts and dumpsters throughout the U.S., including in federal applications, such as at the national parks, forests and monuments, the organization says.

These labels are in use in more than 9,000 kindergarten through 12^th grade public schools and universities, as well as in government offices, airports, businesses, retail shops, restaurants, stadiums, hospitals, religious institutions, single-family and multifamily residential recycling programs, recycling drop-off centers and other public spaces.

As an example of the effectiveness of the standardized labels for recycling and compost bins, individual school districts have reported savings of as much as $6 million in trash hauling fees within the first two years of implementing the standardized labels on their bins, due to the dramatic improvements in their recycling programs, RAA says. At Denali, Yosemite and Grand Teton national parks, recycling levels doubled, and contamination levels decreased to low single-digit percentages when they began displaying the standardized labels on their bins. The 2018 Super Bowl hosted at the U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis was the first and only zero-waste Super Bowl in history—a direct result of having standardized labels displayed on the bins in the stadium. This resulted in an increase of four times the previous recycling levels and reduced contamination to nearly undetectable levels, the organization adds.