Since 1993, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has honored more than 250 successful environmental projects and efforts. By honoring these winners, the TCEQ hopes to encourage others to initiate like-minded projects and reinforce a spirit of environmental stewardship. They are celebrating their 2020 Texas Environmental Excellence Awards Civic/Community Winner, Keep Texas Recycling (KTR), a Keep Texas Beautiful program, for its rural recycling cooperative and programming.
Keep Texas Recycling is formerly an independent nonprofit known as Cooperative Teamwork & Recycling Assistance, that has been helping underserved rural communities establish, maintain, or improve recycling as an economically viable option for the past 27 years. KTR negotiates for its members, obtaining more affordable recycling options in communities that would likely pay more if they were to contract haulers by themselves.
The program has also forged unique partnerships with national organizations to provide support and education on how to keep hazardous or hard-to-recycle items out of the landfill. In the past, KTR partnered with Call2Recycle to assist communities in setting up recycling programs for rechargeable batteries. KTR also worked with the Carton Council to pilot a program to improve carton recycling in rural communities.
“KTR has helped us completely revamp our program,” said Jordan Rutherford, Bandera County Commissioner. “With their assistance we were able to acquire more efficient equipment and start moving our material to market in truckload quantities. Bandera County truly appreciates Keep Texas Recycling.”
The celebration of their award comes a year late, as the ceremony was cancelled amidst the pandemic. The civic award honors community partner projects that work together to support environmental sustainability. KTR addresses the recycling needs of over 500 entities covering an area of 43,000 square miles.
Learn more about Keep Texas Recycling by following this link: https://www.ktb.org/keeptexasrecycling
