Recycling Partnership Nabs $1.5M in Corporate Investment from ExxonMobil

ExxonMobile’s VP of sustainability Dave Andrew says the company’s “fundamental purpose is to help improve people’s lives and empower human progress. Expanding community access to efficient recycling systems is a priority for us.”

The energy company joins 34 other companies including Coca-Cola, Target, Amazon, Pepsi, Starbucks and P&G is helping The Recycling Partnership create a sustainable future through recycling.

The companies believe that collaboration, across and within industries, is key to building sustainable communities, according to The Recycling Partnership. By working with global companies like ExxonMobil, “we will be able to have a much larger impact on the health of our planet and people’s everyday lives, now and in the future,” says Recycling Partnership CEO Keefe Harrison.

In four years, The Recycling Partnership has reached 33 million households in 640 communities with efforts to improve recycling access and increase the quality of recyclables. Since 2014, the nonprofit has leveraged $29 million in infrastructure diverting a total of 115 million pounds of recyclables from landfills, avoiding 164,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas and saving 2.0 trillion BTUs.

The Recycling Partnership’s goal is to help the country double its current recycling rate and capture 22 million more tons of recyclables per year, avoid 50 million metric tons of greenhouse gas annually, and save $250 million in contamination costs every year.

For Example...

Last month, The Recycling Partnership announced results of efforts in Atlanta, Denver and Chicago. The partnership teamed up with city officials to offer educational programs aimed at helping cities develop a deeper understanding of their recycling programs and find solutions that can be adopted full scale.

• Atlanta: The city’s collection trucks were already using an app developed by Rubicon Global, so the technology company worked to develop a new contamination tracking app for inspectors. That will be available to Atlanta going forward and could potentially be used as a standalone in other cities.
• Denver: The initial plan for Denver was to focus on cardboard, but the city decided that cans were a higher priority after finding large amounts of them in the baseline characterization study. Among many takeaways from Denver, Marshall noted traditional mailers and cart tags were more effective than social media campaigns.
• Chicago: has publicly struggled with its curbside recycling efforts in recent years, the education campaign was an even bigger focus. Working with Recycle By City this went citywide, and was boosted by additional grant funding from Target and Coca-Cola.

Since 2015, The Recycling Partnership has invested more than $27 million of corporate funding in recycling infrastructure.