KALAMAZOO, MI (WKZO AM/FM) – The City of Kalamazoo is kicking off two comprehensive recycling education and outreach programs to help residents in over 13,900 single-family and multifamily households improve their recycling efforts.
The campaigns are funded with $304,500 in grants and technical support from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) and the national nonprofit The Recycling Partnership. City officials says the aim is to promote more and better recycling while decreasing the amount of contaminated materials that are inadvertently deposited in recycling carts.
To encourage single-family Kalamazoo residents to recycle more materials and more often, households that have a recycling cart but are not participating in collection will receive an in-home recycling kit, making it easier to transport recyclables to the curbside cart for collection. In addition, nearly 13,000 Kalamazoo homes currently enrolled in the single-family curbside recycling program can expect to receive information in the mail about accepted materials, their collection schedule, and messaging to help them recycle with more confidence.
The 2024 single-family project builds upon a previous project, which started through funding and technical support for last year’s cart-tagging recycling initiative as part of The Recycling Partnership’s “Feet on the Street” initiative with EGLE.
That push provided Kalamazoo residents in single-family households personalized and real-time curbside recycling education and feedback about what is and isn’t accepted for recycling. Findings from the 2023 campaign provided DPS officials with information about Kalamazoo households’ unique recycling needs to help develop new, targeted interventions to continue improving recycling in the community.
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