The Department of Environmental Protection announced $5 million in recycling performance grants to reward more than 320 municipalities based on the amount of materials they collect and recycled in 2006.

“Record-high fuel and energy costs are challenging local governments, businesses and families all across our state,” said Gov. Rendell. “These grants will help local communities defray those higher costs while continuing to expand their recycling collections, and in some cases earn increased revenues from these valuable commodities.

“Recyclable materials are a great benefit to manufacturers, who save on their own energy costs because recyclable materials require less energy to process than virgin raw materials.”

The high costs of energy and fuel are straining budgets for many recycling programs, but some communities are finding opportunities to offset costs and increase revenues by expanding recycling collections.

With the price of petroleum near record highs, commodity markets for recyclable paper and plastics are expanding because prices for recovered materials are increasingly attractive compared to virgin materials. Communities that contract to sell the recyclable materials they collect benefit by increasing revenues and avoiding the costs to dispose of the materials.

Within the past 13 months, Allentown has taken advantage of improved market opportunities for recyclable materials by expanding its curbside and drop-off collections, implementing innovative revenue-sharing contracts, and boosting participation through convenient single-stream collections and limits on trash disposal.

When Allentown implemented its curb-side paper fiber recycling program, it added cardboard and paperboard to the list of items it accepts for drop-off and curb-side collections and increased revenues for the second-half of the year by 25 percent to $169,859.

The city projects a 40 percent increase this year.

Most recently, Allentown announced that #1 through #7 plastic bottles, jugs, containers and buckets can now be recycled. Previously, only those coded #1 and #2 could be recycled. Compared to this time last year, Allentown has increased its commingled glass, aluminum, steel and plastics collections by 53 tons, a 7 percent increase in materials recycled, and received increased revenues of $23,898, a 256 percent increase.

Pennsylvania is home to more than 3,200 recycling and reuse businesses and organizations that generate more than $18 billion in gross annual sales and provide paychecks totaling $2.9 billion to more than 81,000 employees. Additionally, these businesses add more than $305 million in taxes to the state treasury.

Pennsylvanians divert 5 million tons of recyclables from municipal waste each year, which benefits the commonwealth by:

· Saving more than 95 trillion Btu of energy, or an amount equivalent to the output of three large coal-fired power plants;

· Saving consumers and industries more than $250 million in disposal costs and providing businesses with $550 million worth of materials; and

· Reducing carbon dioxide emissions by an equivalent of more than 2.5 million metric tons, which is like offsetting the emissions from 1.7 million cars and light trucks.

DEP has approved 323 of the 779 performance grant applications received for calendar year 2006 recycling. The remaining applications are being reviewed and additional grant awards may be announced in the coming months.

A list of the grants awarded is available online.

For more information, visit DEP’s Recycling webpage.

8/1/2008