January 3, 2012
Dear MRN Members,
Happy New Year!
I want to let you know about one of the more important decisions made by MRN’s Board of Directors during the latter half of 2011. The MRN Board unanimously approved entering into a partnership with Keep America Beautiful (KAB), a national organization formed in 1953 and which much more recently created a Recycling Department. Collectively, KAB recycling staff members have more than 100 years of recycling experience.
Becoming a partner with KAB has many practical benefits for MRN.
KAB takes the lead role on a variety of recycling programs, and KAB
partners (and often other organizations within states where partnerships
with state recycling organizations exist) can pick and choose the
programs with which they want to get involved. The following are brief
descriptions of four recycling programs KAB is currently sponsoring:
- America Recycles Day – annual promotional effort focusing on recycling activities on or around November 15th;
- RecycleMania – annual competition between colleges and universities regarding recycling and waste prevention;
- Recycle-Bowl – a competition between K-12 schools regarding recycling; and
- Public Space Recycling Initiative – an ongoing effort to make recycling opportunities more widespread throughout the country.
For more information on the above programs, please go to www.kab.org.
In
addition, KAB is taking a lead role in shaping the recycling message on
a national public service advertising campaign to include traditional
media and newer social media. KAB is collaborating with the Ad Council,
Earth 911, and the EPA on this project, expected to have a value of $90
million and be visible for several years.
The annual cost of
partnership with KAB is only $5 per MRN member, which means less than
$400 at this time. The financial benefits to KAB partners, such as MRN,
far outweigh these costs.
One of the major considerations
making the MRN Board comfortable in partnering with KAB is that KAB has
expressly ruled out taking positions on solid waste/recycling policy
issues, including but not limited to beverage container deposit
legislation.
MRN’s Board of Directors is also closely
monitoring developments with two other recycling organizations, the
National Recycling Coalition (NRC) and the Recycling Organization of
North America (RONA). NRC had a near-death experience just a few years
ago, but NRC has managed to clear its books of debt and now hopes to
reclaim its status as a “voice of recycling” on policy matters in the
United States. Meanwhile, some former members of NRC formed RONA when
it looked like NRC would not survive, and have focused much of their
efforts since then on trying to develop a national recycling
certification program. The Boards of Directors of both NRC and RONA
have agreed in principle that NRC/RONA “unity” makes sense, and four
members of both boards are currently engaged in determining how best to
achieve “unity” (which may or may not take shape as a formal merger).
While MRN’s Board of Directors will continue to monitor the situation,
for the time being MRN has neither reaffiliated with NRC nor affiliated
with RONA.
Please feel free to contact me or any other MRN Board
member if you would like to share your views regarding any of these
matters.
Thanks, and best wishes for a happy and prosperous new year.
Tanya Adams
President
tadams [at] ccgov [dot] org
410-996-6275 (ext. 224)