Recycling on campus soon will receive a face-lift as a new regional partnership aims to increase recycling in the community.
Northern Arizona University’s Merriam-Powell Center for Environmental Research has joined forces with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, Coconino County, the city of Flagstaff and Willow Bend Environmental Education Center to create the Partnership of Recycling Education.
“Our goal is to provide residents and students of Coconino County with the information and resources they need to make recycling more accessible,” said Tiffany Fallucca, outreach coordinator at Merriam-Powell.
Partnership of Recycling Education, supported by a one-year grant from ADEQ, plans to coordinate regional recycling education and outreach to students, residents and businesses in northern Arizona, spreading the message “Recycle—We’re all in this together!”
The revised NAU system also advises people to “Keep it Clean” by removing food and other nonrecyclable wastes from the clean material stream.
The initiative plans to increase recycling education awareness through a range of advertising, promotion and community outreach events.
While recycling at NAU has been in place since early 1991, this new program enables the university to capture recyclable materials while making it easy for community members to participate. Ultimately, the program hopes to decrease contamination of recyclables in the Cinder Lakes Landfill.
The program also will bolster the goals of NAU’s new Office of Sustainability, which assumes on-campus, non-academic sustainability initiatives.
“The education piece of what Merriam-Powell is doing is critically important to establishing a clear message about recycling,” said Heather Farley, sustainability coordinator at NAU. “An effective recycling program is really the first step to becoming a more sustainable community.”
Partnership of Recycling Education encourages students to visit recycling.nau.edu for fliers, more on campus recycling and a list of recyclable items.