A long-time presence in the word of curbside recycling is changing its name with an eye on expanding its role.
Curbside Value Partnership, around since 2003, is becoming the Recycling Partnership, the name of a program CVP has been managing since last summer.
“There's not too much drama behind the name change, other than mostly we're hearing relief from people that it's less confusing now,” said Keefe Harrison, executive director of the group.
The Recycling Partnership grew out of a 120-day effort by the Southeast Recycling Development Council to identify ways to boost recycling rates through public-private collaborations. SERDC, while laying the foundation for such an approach and proving the idea to be feasible, passed off management of the partnership to CVP last year.
SERDC is a regionally focused group and saw the potential for the model created by its SERDC 120 exercise to extend beyond its Southeast coverage area of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.
It was also just about a year ago that Keefe Harrison took the reins as executive director of CVP after long-time leader Steve Thompson retired.
“Between the Curbside Value Partnership, the SERDC 120 and the Recycling Partnership, people were confused with the names. So they are glad to have it rolled into one,” she said.
Changing the name from CVP to the Recycling Partnership also signals a transition in the organization to move beyond its traditional educational and outreach model to also include more technical assistance and grants to help boost curbside recycling collection, Harrison said.
“With the marriage of these two models, we get to stretch much further with this public-private partnership,” Harrison said.
“What's different now is we look across the entire industry and say, ‘What are the barriers to the whole industry,' design both educational and technical resources around those barriers and then find as many communities who are in that stage of life as possible,” Harrison said.
The Recycling Partnership previously started work in Richmond, Va., Columbia, S.C., and Florence, Ala.
Along with announcing the new name, the partnership also said its next round of communities includes Cleveland, Charlotte, N.C., and Blacksburg, Va.
While the Recycling Partnership provides a variety of resources designed to help boost curbside recycling rates, a key component is to often help fund the placement of roll-out recycling containers. These carts provide added capacity and convenience compared with bins that have to be carried to the curb.
Funding comes from a variety of sponsors including the American Chemistry Council, the Society of the Plastics Industry Inc., Association of Postconsumer Plastic Recyclers and Foodservice Packaging Institute. Company sponsors include Amcor Ltd., Coca-Cola Co., Sonoco Products Co. and Waste Management.
When CVP agreed to take on the Recycling Partnership responsibilities last year, Harrison said, “it was very much a testing ground to see how well it would work.”
“The initiative was kept separate from the organization as a whole. But as time has gone by and they have worked well together, we found that the Recycling Partnership needed CVP just has much as CVP needed the Recycling Partnership,” she said.
CVP, over the past year, has more than doubled in size in terms of both membership and budget.
Adding the Recycling Partnership to CVP last year “was a natural fit to our evolving approach; this name change further echoes our organizational growth and systems-based approach developed over the past 12 months,” said Megan Daum, chair of the Recycling Partnership's board, in a statement.
