The National Recycling Coalition (NRC) honored their recycling awards recipients at the 2018 Resource Recycling Conference in St. Louis last week. The awards program honors outstanding individuals, programs and organizations around the country, both for their achievements and to serve as a model and a resource for NRC members.
NRC’s Awards Committee Chair Lisa Skumatz noted that “The winners embodied best practices, and we were very pleased that winners came from across the country to accept their awards, so attendees had the chance to learn first-hand how these programs work so well.”
Recycle Colorado was presented with the Outstanding Recycling Organization award. Over the last few years, Recycle Colorado (formerly Colorado Association for Recycling) faced many of the same challenges other recycling organizations were facing: mergers that reduced membership, programs suffering from lower market prices. Rather than suffer a slow decline, Recycle Colorado shook things up. A new executive director, Laurie Johnson, helped update its vision, mission and operations plan and adopted a mantra of undertaking only activities that were tangible, actionable and measurable with a focus on developing infrastructure, end markets and policy. Member services are no longer the focus. Recycle Colorado revised the traditional membership model and conference session design and in one year increased membership 50%, significantly exceeding sponsorship and revenue goals. According to the NRC press release, “This RO has ideas that can be learned from!”