The winning communities participated in the inaugural Do You Recycle? Challenge aimed at increasing recycling access, eliminating contamination, and improving the city’s recycling system
Washington, D.C. August 4, 2022 – Three Atlanta area multifamily communities received recognition for outstanding improvements to recycling on their properties as part of the Do You Recycle? Challenge, a voluntary pilot challenge focused on improving recycling access and education for multifamily communities across the City of Atlanta. “People who live in multifamily communities wish to recycle but can face challenges with accessibility,” said Cecilia Shutters, Managing Director, ESG and Circularity Finance at the Recycling Partnership. “Recycling access is not equitable in every community, but programs like this help to ensure city residents have adequate, efficient, and equitable access.”
During a recent ceremony at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, three communities were recognized for achievements in increasing recycling and decreasing contamination including:
- Largest Percentage Increase in Recycling Participation Award presented to Cortland at Phipps for increasing the average recycling pounds per unit from 1.2 pounds to 2.8 pounds.
- Largest Percentage Decrease in Recycling Contamination Award presented to Georgia Avenue Highrise for decreasing contamination by 40%.
- Most Total Tonnage in Recycling Award presented to Lofts at the Belvedere for averaging approximately 5.9 recycling pounds per unit per week.
“As the managing partner of Do You Recycle? Challenge, Live Thrive has been honored to be a part of a program that has improved recycling options for these residential housing units in Atlanta,” said Peggy Whitlow Ratcliffe, Founder & Executive Director, Live Thrive Inc. “This program is in alignment with Live Thrive’s mission to provide comprehensive education about the importance of sustainable materials management. As part of this education process, we encourage people to reuse, recycle, or reengineer to divert harmful materials from Atlanta’s landfills and waterways. This effort is intentionally grounded in the collaborative knowledge of local organizations so that the technical and financial resources provided by The Recycling Partnership can be most sustainably utilized in Atlanta for Atlanta residents.”
In addition to the partnership with Live Thrive, the Do You Recycle? Challenge brought together a substantial group of local organizations supporting sustainability including Atlanta Housing, Livable Buckhead, Georgia Recycling Coalition, Atlanta Recycles, Atlanta Office of Resilience, and the Atlanta Apartment Association. Since the Challenge launched twelve months ago, 27 properties representing nearly 5,000 residential housing units have received improved recycling education. Multifamily properties in the city of Atlanta can still access resources and education through the end of 2022. To find out more go to https://livethrive.org/do-you-recycle-challenge/ or email LT@livethrive.org.
The Do You Recycle Challenge is part of the multi-family workstream within The Recycling Partnership’s three-year, multimillion dollar grant made possible by The Coca-Cola Foundation. In addition to focusing on multi-family communities, the Atlanta project also supported single-family home recycling and recycling programs at the city’s colleges and universities.
About The Recycling Partnership
At The Recycling Partnership, we are solving for circularity. We mobilize people, data, and solutions across the value chain to unlock the environmental and economic benefits of recycling and a circular economy. We work on the ground with thousands of communities to transform underperforming recycling programs; we partner with companies to achieve packaging circularity, increase access to recycled materials, and meet sustainability commitments; and we work with government to develop policy solutions to address the systemic needs of our residential recycling system and advance a circular economy. We foster public-private partnerships and drive positive change at every step of the recycling and circularity process. Since 2014, we have diverted 770 million pounds of new recyclables from landfills, saved 968 million gallons of water, avoided more than 670,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases, and driven significant reductions in targeted contamination rates. Learn more at recyclingpartnership.org.