New Connecticut foundation aims to boost recycling

The RecycleCT Foundation has announce it is ready to begin promoting the importance of recycling and encouraging people, government entities, businesses, and organizations to adopt recycling as part of their everyday lives or operations.

Robert Klee, who serves as chairman of RecycleCT as well as Commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), said the new foundation has launched its first major effort: a recycling grant program focused on K-12 schools.

“We are offering small grants to fund projects focused on increasing awareness of recycling or for projects that lead directly to increased waste reduction, reuse, recycling or composting in Connecticut’s schools,” Klee says. “While RecycleCT is targeting schools for its first grant initiative we will soon be offering grants in other important sectors.”

The grants to schools can be used to fund projects such as: field trips, school assemblies or staff participation in workshops; purchase equipment for staff to better comply with recycling requirements; purchase re-useable dishes and flatware for the cafeteria as an alternative to single-use items; buy equipment for on-site composting.

Recent legislation, P.A. 14-94, called for the creation of the RecycleCT Foundation to raise public awareness and participation in recycling. The legislation also called for the recycling diversion rate to increase to 60 percent by 2024. DEEP says the state’s overall recycling rate is currently between 25-30 percent.

Serving on the Council for RecycleCT are:

•     DEEP Commissioner Klee;
•     DECD Deputy Commissioner Tim Sullivan;
•     Tom DeVivo, Willimantic Waste;
•     Frank Antonacci, Murphy Road Recycling;
•     Ron Goldstein, Esq.; and
•     Brian Paganini, Quantum BioPower.

Additional council members may be appointed in the future.

More information concerning RecycleCT and the School Grant project can be found at www.RecycleCT.org.