Dive Brief:
- Keep America Beautiful (KAB) announced Wednesday the launch of the seventh annual Recycle-Bowl, a recycling and food scrap collection challenge for K-12 students and school communities.
- The challenge begins Oct. 16 and ends on America Recycles Day a month later. Like last year, KAB is encouraging people to use #BeRecycled to talk about recycling and purchasing products made from recycled products.
- For the first time during Recycle-Bowl, KAB is partnering with PepsiCo so participants in the Recycle-Bowl can also take part in PepsiCo's Recycle Rally.
Dive Insight:
Since its beginning, participants in the Recycle-Bowl have collected 25 million pounds of recyclables and reached 2.2 million students. The 2016 challenge alone saw 700,000 students participating with 3.2 million pounds of recyclables collected.
By targeting students, KAB and similar programs are able to educate consumers at a young age, which may help instill recycling and waste reduction habits early on. And, given the state of recycling knowledge around the country — including in cities like Chicago and Denver, which have low diversion rates — nationwide education programs about recycling can certainly be seen as effective.
By ending Recycle-Bowl on America Recycles Day, KAB can expand its reach from students and include businesses, community organizations, individuals and governments looking to host recycling-oriented events or programs. Recycling and other diversion programs can be expensive for local governments, so taking advantage of national programs by localizing them can be a cost-effective way to engage consumers and, hopefully, boost recycling rates.
