Educate, Don't Contaminate! A Toolkit to Clean up Recycling

NHDES Credits:  1

In 2019, ecomaine, waste manager for 400,000 people in Maine, along with four municipal partners, piloted an internship program to address costly recycling contamination.  Before heading out into the communities, interns received a deep dive training into the waste hierarchy and the recent changes to the recycling market. Over 8 weeks, interns tagged recycling bins and provided residents with educational materials on proper recycling that utilized community-based social marketing principles. Following the success of the pilot, the partners created a toolkit for communities facing high contamination rates to implement a similar program.

Join the Northeast Resource Recovery Association, your recycling nonprofit, for this recorded webinar to discuss these issues. Lucy Perkins is the Sustainability Program Coordinator in South Portland, ME. Matt Grondin is the Communications Manager at ecomaine.

Participants say: "I learned about the rate of contamination. I like the idea of having summer interns to track recycling."