ADEQ: Arizona Department of Environmental Quality AZ.gov, Arizona's Official Web Site
Our mission is to protect and enhance public health and the environment
Waste Programs Division: Solid Waste Management: Recycling Links

Links for the General Public

Calendar Events K-12 Schools
Colleges and Universities Municipalities, Schools, Businesses, Non-Profits
E-Waste (Electronics) Recycling (Coming in 015) School Curriculums
Federal Agencies Sustainability Mobile Apps (Coming in 2015)
Grants  

Sustainability Classes From Arizona Municipalities

National Sustainability Programs

Federal Agencies

  • Federal Green Challenge (EPA) - The Federal Green Challenge is a national effort under US EPA's Sustainable Materials Management Program, challenging EPA and other federal agencies throughout the country to lead by example in reducing the Federal Government's environmental impact.

Colleges and Universities

  • Gameday Recycling Challenge - The GameDay Recycling Challenge is a friendly competition for colleges and universities to promote waste reduction at their football games. During the challenge, colleges and universities implement waste reduction programs during home football games. Schools track and report waste reductions and disposal data that is used to rank the schools.
  • College and University Recycling Coalition (CURC) -A membership-based non- profit organization facilitating the exchange of technical knowledge and best practices on recycling and waste reduction programs among institutions of higher learning.
  • RecycleMania - RecycleMania is a friendly competition and benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities to their campus communities.

K-12 Schools

  • Recycle Bowl (KAB) - Many schools have been slow to embrace recycling. Through Recycle-Bowl, we hope to galvanize recycling in elementary, middle and high schools across America. And, friendly competition is a proven way to motivate young people toward adopting sustainable behaviors.
  • Crazy Crayons - This "recycling" education, community service has made it possible to stop more than 96,000 pounds of unwanted crayons from going into landfills with the help from schools, organization educators and kids across this country.
  • ColorCycle (Crayola) - Crayola and schools across North America are banding together to help kids understand the importance of their role in protecting the environment. That’s why they launched Crayola ColorCycle. Through this initiative, students in K-12 schools across the continental United States and parts of Canada can collect and repurpose used Crayola markers.
  • ADEQ Colorcycle
  • Funding Factory - Thousands of teachers, coaches and parents raise funds for their school with FundingFactory! Their recycling fundraiser for schools is perfect for environmental clubs and Green Teams, sports boosters, PTA/PTO, or school leaders that not only want to make a financial impact but want to do it with the environment in mind.

Municipalities, Schools, Businesses, Non-Profits (Open to Anyone)

  • State Electronics Challenge (NERC) - The State Electronics Challenge (SEC) encourages state, tribal, regional, and local governments, including schools and other public entities, to responsibly manage office equipment, by purchasing greener office equipment, reducing the impacts of these products during use, and managing obsolete electronics in an environmentally safe way.
  • Food Recovery Challenge (EPA) - How much of your food and money are you literally throwing away? The Food Recovery Challenge asks participants to reduce as much of their food waste as possible – saving money, helping communities, and protecting the environment.
  • WasteWise (EPA) Organizations can join WasteWise as a partner, endorser, or both. Partners demonstrate how they reduce waste, practice environmental stewardship, and incorporate sustainable materials management into their waste-handling processes. Endorsers promote enrollment in WasteWise as part of a comprehensive approach to help their stakeholders realize the economic benefits to reducing waste.
  • Cigarette Litter Prevention (KAB) - The Cigarette Litter Prevention Program (CLPP) is the nation's largest program aimed at reducing cigarette litter. By providing people with easily accessible information about ash receptacles, pocket and portable ashtrays and other educational tools, KAB is making strides in educating the public and ensuring a cleaner tomorrow.
  • Great American Cleanup (KAB) - The Great American Cleanup is the country’s largest community improvement program that kicks off in more than 20,000 communities each spring. This national program engages 4+ million volunteers who take action in their communities to create positive change and lasting impact.
  • Wrap Recycling Action Program (W.R.A.P.) - Today more than 1 billion pounds of plastic bags and wraps are recycled annually. But plastic film packaging, beyond just bags, still has tremendous unrealized potential. There are so many types of bags and film wraps that can be recycled with grocery bags-- bread and produce bags and wraps from products like diapers, cases of drinks, paper plates and other goods. W.R.A.P. engages all stakeholders (e.g., recyclers, local and state governments, brand companies, schools, retailers, and others) to educate and facilitate film recycling.
  • Terracycle - TerraCycle is a highly-awarded, international upcycling and recycling company that collects difficult-to-recycle packaging and products and repurposes the material into affordable, innovative products. TerraCycle is widely considered the world’s leader in the collection and reuse of non-recyclable, post-consumer waste.
  • Textbook Recycling (NWF) - Over 4.3 billion books are produced annually in the United States for a variety of sectors and purposes. Unfortunately, many books – after their end of useful life – end up in landfills. To address this, National Wildlife Federation, McGraw-Hill, and NewPage Corporation entered into a collaborative project to study textbook recycling in the United States, pilot a recycling project, and develop best practices to increase textbook recycling.
  • Call 2 Recycle - Founded in 1994, Call2Recycle—North America’s first and largest battery stewardship program—is a non-profit organization that collects and recycles batteries at no cost for municipalities, businesses and consumers.
  • Bag Central Station - Bag Central Station (BCS) is a bag recycling program that was introduced in Phoenix, AZ in 2007.
  • Freecycle - The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 5,167 groups with 8,139,200 members around the world. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (and getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills.
  • ADEQ Recycling Locator - Use the Recycling Locator to find out where to recycle most household items. Just type in your zip code, find your item in the list and recycle, recycle, recycle.

Calendar EventsADEQ American Recycles Day

  • National Green Week – 1st week of Feb thru Earth Week - National Green Week is an annual event that empowers schools to engage in sustainability focused lessons, projects or activities between the first full week in February and the end of Earth Month (April). Participating districts, schools, classrooms or youth groups choose a week, then select from GEF's sustainability focused programs to be their ‘green theme.’ Each theme provides 5 day standards-based lesson sets, activities, recommended reading, sustainability tips, contests, and more!
  • Earth Day – April 22nd - The first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, activated 20 million Americans from all walks of life and is widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement. The passage of the landmark Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and many other groundbreaking environmental laws soon followed. Growing out of the first Earth Day, Earth Day Network (EDN) works with over 22,000 partners in 192 countries to broaden, diversify and mobilize the environmental movement. More than 1 billion people now participate in Earth Day activities each year, making it the largest civic observance in the world.
  • American Recycles Day – Nov. 15th - The only nationally-recognized day for community education and collection events encouraging hundreds of thousands of individuals to recycle. Individuals can take a pledge to recycle at americarecyclesday.org and s/he will receive monthly recycling facts and figures.

Grants

School Curriculums

Sustainability Mobile Apps (Coming in 2015)

r2 leader

E-Waste (Electronics) Recycling

ADEQ, a R2 Leader, supports the safe and sustainable reuse and recycling of electronics (e-waste). R2 Leaders are helping to solve today’s e-scrap challenges by supporting certified recyclers and responsible electronics recycling in Arizona and around the world. ADEQ has co-sponsored over 100 electronics collection events in Arizona collecting over 2.5 million pounds of e-waste and currently utilizes certified e-waste recyclers for all e-waste collection events.