Highlights:

• In an exclamation heavy announcement, the National Recycling Coalition and the Recycling Organizations of America (RONA) have announced their intent to merge and create a single association called the NorthAmerican Recycling Coalition (NRC)
• Organization will be co-chaired by Mark Lichtenstein of the National Recycling Coalition and Marjorie Griek of RONA
• The group hopes to make a formal announcement with final details at the August Resource Recycling Conference in Austin.

From the release:

Today we are announcing a formal, major step toward the consolidation of the National Recycling Coalition, Inc. and Recycling Organizations of North America, Inc. (RONA). The result of this consolidation would be a new organization called the NorthAmerican Recycling Coalition (NRC) that will bring the best of both groups into one cohesive unit. We see this historic action providing the framework for accelerating the advancement of recycling and sustainable materials management solutions throughout the Continent!

RONA and the National Recycling Coalition are already providing a valuable set of services, representation, institutional knowledge and staff to their individual and shared members. The intent is to unify those efforts in one body. Both organizations will build on each other's successes, resources, assets, vision, and goodwill to build a new coalition that is stronger, more effective, strategic, can leverage more resources, lead national dialogue, and create positive change with North America's current materials management system!

Our boards have met jointly, and we have formed a small working group to finalize the creation of this new NRC. We want to be crystal clear about our expectations:

We will be driving this group to finalize the formation of the new NRC, not deliberating over "whether the formation should occur!"

We acknowledge that there is a lot of detail work to be addressed, but also recognize that there are components of this process we don't need to over-think, and that don't need to be over-processed. In other words, there are things we can do right now. To this end, Mark is calling a special meeting of the National Recycling Coalition Board for July 13th. The NRC is also actively taking necessary actions to amend its current New York State Certificate of Incorporation to change the National Recycling Coalition name to that of NorthAmerican Recycling Coalition (NRC).

The NorthAmerican Recycling Coalition Formation Working Group will be co-chaired by both of us, and its priority will be to further develop a detailed "Plan of Consolidation." This plan will layout the details and timeframe of steps needed to fully merge RONA and NRC and create the new organization. The draft initial structure of this plan has been developed by both boards, and includes a statement of "What We Believe," vision and mission, guiding principles and value statements, and strategies to achieve the mission.