Ann Arbor Curbside Recycling
Recovery in Ann Arbor
Where Do Recyclables Go?
White House Recognition
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White House Recognition
The White House Task Force on Recycling recently recognized the City of Ann Arbor for meeting the National Recycling Challenge, which is designed to create a more sustainable America.

Only 77 organizations nationwide met the White House challenge as of October 2000. The minimum entry requirement is to achieve the Federal government's 35% recycling rate. Ann Arbor currently recycles 52% of its residential waste stream. Over 90% of Ann Arbor residents with curbside collection participate in the home recycling program. In addition, Ann Arbor has high participation in its weekly multi-family recycling colelction to more than 24,000 units, which represents more than half of the city's total 112,000 population.

The White House report commended Ann Arbor for the range of waste reduction strategies. The City-provided commercial recycling collection program involves nearly half of the Ann Arbor's 3,000 businesses and agencies.

Internally, City Hall's purchasing regulations exceed the Federal guidelines for use of post-consumer recycled paper and has an aggressive chlorine-free paper purchasing policy in place. A $50,000 "Buy-Recycled" grant program sponsored by the Solid Waste Department encourages the innovative in-house use of recycled materials.

Other areas of recognition outlined in the White House report included the City's cost-effective development of a municipal compost center, expanded Drop-Off Station and state-of-the-art Materials Recovery Facility (MRF), which opened in 1995. In the last fiscal year ending June 30, 2000, the MRF generated over a quarter of a million dollars in revenue for the City from the sale of recyclables, while continuing to provide a lower-cost alternative to landfilling waste.

The city's various educational outreach programs and partnerships with organizations such as Recycle Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan were acknowledged as supporting the overall community waste reduction successes. The Solid Waste Department's policies to solicit competitive bids and "benchmark" costs for collection services were noted as effective methods to reduce the waste stream while containing costs. This latest recognition from the nation's capitol builds upon the City of Ann Arbor's selection as one of the nation's top twenty recycling communities by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in its mid-1999 report "Cutting the Waste Stream in Half: Community Record-Setters Show How."