The Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA) has awarded Seattle’s recycling education program with its 2010 Silver Excellence Award in Marketing.
SWANA recognized Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) for its “Better Recycling” campaign that focused on educating businesses and residences about the changes to their collection services that began in March, 2009, including weekly food waste collection, commingled recycling, and more materials that can go in residential recycling and food and yard waste containers.
Last year, Seattle residents increased their food waste recycling by more than 40 percent, diverting more than 27,000 tons of food waste from the landfill.
The SWANA Excellence awards are the most recent in a series of honors Seattle has received for its recycling program. In May, the Washington State Recycling Association named the SPU Seattle its 2010 “Recycler of the Year” for its public education program.
For more than 40 years, SWANA has been the leading professional association in the solid waste field. The association serves more than over 7,200 members throughout North America, and thousands more with conferences, certifications, publications, and technical training courses. For more information about SWANA and the SWANA Excellence Awards, visit www.swana.org.