If you didn’t know, America Recycles Day® (ARD) is a Keep America Beautiful initiative dedicated to promoting and celebrating recycling in the United States. Keep America Beautiful started America Recycles Day in 1997 to encourage Americans to recycle and buy recycled products. The tradition continues every year on November 15th.
To celebrate America Recycles Day, communities around the nation promote environmental citizenship and sustainability by creating and participating in recycling events such as community clean-ups, tree planting, educational sessions about recycling, and city or neighborhood recycling drives.
According to the EPA, the recycling rate has grown from less than 7 percent in 1960 to 35 percent in 2018. Recycling reduces the amount of waste that ends up in landfills, conserves natural resources, prevents pollution, saves energy, and boosts the economy through the creation of jobs and the support of domestically sourced and American-manufactured goods.
A symposium on the State of Recycling in America is also held in Washington DC. Last year, in 2018, the EPA and participants of the summit signed a unified pledge to commit to work together to improve the state of the recycling system in the United States. System stakeholders in attendance focused on recent market disruptions and the need to improve domestic recycling systems, including collection, infrastructure, and end markets for recovered materials.
Goals resulting from the symposium included:
- education and outreach for consumers, local, tribal and state governments about what to do with recyclable materials at end of use and how to prevent contamination
- enhancing materials management infrastructure to upgrade, modernize and produce a more resilient national recycling system less volatile to changes in material streams and markets
- encouraging communication and collaboration between private enterprise and governmental entities to support innovation and development of products made from recycled materials
- enhancing measurement through standardized and aligned data for tracking recyclable materials and improving recycled materials management in the U.S.
How you can participate in America Recycles Day
If you want to get involved, you are encouraged to take the pledge to reduce, reuse, recycle, and buy recycled products on the americarecyclesday.org website. America Recycles Day displays the number of people who have taken the pledge as well as what people have committed to recycling.
You can also follow America Recycles Day on Twitter @recyclesday for facts, tips, and techniques to increase recycling.
If you are interested in local events, there are some taking place the week of November 15th in the Seattle-Tacoma area. The options advertised currently include:
City of Tacoma Recycle Center Tours
- November 15 @ 8:00 am – 5:00 pm
- Tacoma Recycle Center, 3510 S Mullen, Tacoma, 98402 United States
Free Electronic Recycling Event by SBK Recycle
- November 16 @ 10:00 am – 2:00 pm
- Wilson High School, 1202 N Orchard St, Tacoma, WA 98406 (14th street parking lot)
- Learn More
Of course, every day is a good day to recycle! That’s why recycling events are published throughout the year.
Finally, if you have decided to participate in America Recycles Day, you should share your pledge on Twitter using the hashtag #BERECYCLED.
So, in summary, to participate in America Recycled Day, you can:
- Take the pledge to recycle at org/pledge.
- Attend a local recycling event
- Share your commitment to recycling on social media with the hashtag #BERECYCLED
Finally, if you’re a DTG employee or customer let us know you have taken the pledge by following us on social media and commenting on our America Recycles Day posts or tagging us in your pledge post. Use the hashtags #DTGEmployee, #DTGCustomer or #DTGfan to identify you. We’d love to know the efforts you are making in your personal household to be environmentally conscious!