The Recycling Partnership Launches New Fund to Accelerate Community Recycling Rates

On June 11, 2026, The Recycling Partnership announced the launch of a comprehensive new initiative named the “Recycling Participation Fund.” Backed by major industry leaders, the primary objective of this fund is to radically increase recycling willingness and participation rates across American communities. The project focuses on identifying and completely dismantling everyday barriers that prevent household recycling, thereby strengthening public confidence in local programs. Data indicates that more than 50% of recyclable materials are lost within homes before ever entering the collection system, making resident education and behavior change an indispensable lever alongside infrastructure upgrades.

Purpose, Background, and Corporate Supporters of the “Recycling Participation Fund”

The Washington, D.C.-based Recycling Partnership’s new fund is being realized through a significant and extensive industry coalition. The large-scale project is financially backed by prominent corporations and charitable foundations, including Arconic, the Milliken & Company Charitable Foundation, Niagara Cares (the philanthropic division of Niagara Bottling), Procter & Gamble, and Primo Brands. This initiative does not start from scratch; it leverages more than a decade of resident insights, deep field data, and real-world testing to achieve stronger, more sustainable, and more effective recycling outcomes in daily life.

Cody Marshall, Chief Recycling Officer of The Recycling Partnership, clearly emphasized regarding the announcement that people fundamentally want recycling systems to work effectively and transparently. Residents expect and want to know that their daily actions and selective waste collection carry real environmental weight. Marshall highlighted that the organization holds a leading position in gathering deep, scientific, system-level data on household recycling behavior. This exceptional, data-driven position allows them to utilize the newly raised capital and support to drastically shorten the time required to reach next-level, next-generation recycling rates.

Why Now? EPR Laws and Infrastructural Limitations

The launch of the “Recycling Participation Fund” comes at a highly critical and decisive juncture for waste management in the United States. Currently, seven U.S. states are actively implementing Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws. With these strict regulations taking effect, pressure is continuously mounting on local systems to meet highly ambitious recycling performance targets within strict timeframes.

The organization’s detailed analysis and available factual data shed light on one of the greatest bottlenecks in the process: these objectives anchored in EPR laws cannot be achieved through infrastructural investments alone—meaning that simply deploying new processing facilities or machinery is technologically insufficient. According to the most striking data point, even in communities with well-established, decades-old programs, more than 50 percent of recyclable materials are lost within households before they can even enter the waste management and processing system.

Consequently, active and proper resident participation is one of the most urgent, yet historically underdeveloped, levers of the sustainability process. For producers and brands, the newly established fund offers a practical solution to invest directly in the community-level, everyday conditions essential for meaningfully improving recycling outcomes at the source.

Practical Results: The Scale of the Michigan Success Story

The methodology of The Recycling Partnership does not merely rely on theoretical models but can demonstrate proven, tangible practical results. The nonprofit organization has successfully executed over 200 projects specifically focused on changing residential behavior and habit systems.

Among these case studies, a Michigan initiative stands out, perfectly illustrating the efficacy of targeted, behavior-based investments. Conducted in close partnership with the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (MI EGLE), a nearly $9 million investment program successfully boosted the state’s comprehensive recycling rate from a previous 14 percent to a dramatic 25 percent. This remarkable rate increase also means that Michigan’s sustainability performance now officially surpasses the national average. The organization has captured a robust, well-structured dataset from these specific projects, with long-standing support throughout the process from partners such as the Milliken & Company Charitable Foundation, the Walmart Foundation, and Niagara Cares.

Future Plans: Focusing on California, Texas, and Arkansas

Through the financial resources of the new fund, The Recycling Partnership intends to maximize the use of its previous research to further progress understudied solutions in practice and test entirely new strategies to accelerate recycling willingness and resident participation. Future short- and medium-term plans are explicitly geographically focused: the organization will concentrate its resources primarily on California, Texas, Arkansas, and other priority regions of high significance for waste management.

In the first year of the fund’s operation, plans and preliminary announcements indicate that an initial 10 community deployments will be executed directly on the ground at the selected locations. In parallel, the organization is issuing an open invitation to industry producers, encouraging them to invest directly in the practical, ground-level interventions that will effectively move recyclable materials out of homes and into the proper collection carts.

Quantitative Data and Milestones Achieved Since 2014

Since its founding in 2014, the nonprofit organization The Recycling Partnership has been dedicated to solving environmental and sustainability challenges together—tackling problems that no single company, community, or policymaker could fix alone. The scale and effectiveness of more than a decade of work are supported by concrete, verified, and published objective quantitative data. According to the organization’s official disclosures, their work to date has achieved the following:

• More than 2 billion pounds (approximately over 900,000 metric tons) of new recyclables have been successfully recovered back into the system.

• 2.6 million metric tons of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been avoided thanks to well-organized waste management programs and interventions.

• More than 2 million dedicated recycling carts have been successfully delivered to U.S. homes to improve access.

• Overall, approximately $658 million in recycling system improvements and modernization have been catalyzed across the United States.

References and Sources Used:

1. Original Press Release: The Recycling Partnership Launches Fund to Expedite Community Recycling Rates (June 11, 2026)

2. Official State Background Source for the Michigan Program (MI EGLE): EGLE announces record high 25% Michigan recycling rate, more than $11.8M in recycling grants (Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy)