Fund will progress new solutions, building on decades of behavior change research
WASHINGTON, D.C. (June 11, 2026) – The Recycling Partnership (The Partnership) today announced a Recycling Participation Fund, backed by Arconic, Milliken & Company Charitable Foundation, Niagara Cares, Procter & Gamble, and Primo Brands to remove everyday barriers preventing people from participating in recycling and strengthen their confidence in local recycling programs. The fund will turn more than a decade of resident insight, field data, and real-world testing into stronger recycling outcomes.
“People want recycling to work, and they want to know their actions matter,” said Cody Marshall, Chief Recycling Officer of The Recycling Partnership. “As the leading organization that has been on the ground gathering deep, scientific, system-level data on household recycling behavior, we are uniquely positioned to use this pivotal funding to accelerate the time it takes to achieve next-level recycling rates.”
Why now? As Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws are being implemented across seven U.S. states, there is growing pressure to meet ambitious recycling performance targets that cannot be achieved through infrastructure alone. Even in communities with established programs, more than 50% of recyclable material is lost in homes before it enters the system, making resident participation one of the most urgent and underdeveloped levers for progress. For producers, the fund offers a practical way to invest in the community-level conditions needed to improve recycling outcomes.
The Partnership has shown that progress is possible with a track record of over 200 behavior-focused projects. For example, a nearly $9 million investment in Michigan in partnership with MI EGLE boosted the state’s recycling rate from 14% to 25%, surpassing the national average. The Partnership has captured robust data from these projects, with long-standing support from the Milliken & Company Charitable Foundation, the Walmart Foundation, and Niagara Cares, the philanthropic division of Niagara Bottling.
Through the new fund, The Partnership will leverage its research to progress understudied solutions and test new strategies to accelerate recycling participation in California, Texas, Arkansas, and other priority regions with an initial 10 community deployments on the ground within the first year.
The Recycling Partnership invites producers to invest in the on-the-ground interventions that will move materials out of homes and into carts. Click here to connect with our team and learn how to scale action and accelerate recycling rates.
About The Recycling Partnership
The Recycling Partnership is the U.S. nonprofit solving recycling’s toughest challenges, together, by tackling problems no single company, community, or policymaker can fix alone. Since 2014, we’ve helped recover more than 2 billion pounds of new recyclables, avoided 2.6 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, delivered more than 2 million recycling carts to U.S. homes, and catalyzed $658 million in recycling system improvements. Learn more at recyclingpartnership.org.