Be a Recycling Hero!
Provincial Campaign Aims to Reduce Litter in Outdoor Public Places
Grants Available for Schools, Workplaces, Not-for-Profit Organizations and Citizen Groups to Organize Community Cleanups
MONCTON – APRIL 19, 2021 – Encorp Atlantic – the organization responsible for collecting, processing, and recycling all non-alcoholic beverage containers that consumers bring to redemption centres in communities across New Brunswick – is proud to celebrate Earth Day this week by launching the 2nd edition of its popular “Be a Recycling Hero!” campaign – with a strong focus this year on community environmental leadership.
Initiated in 2020, the“Be a Recycling Hero!” campaign aims to raise awareness on reducing litter in outdoor public spaces – especially when it comes to empty beverage containers so easy to reuse and recycle. The campaign encourages New Brunswickers to become Recycling Heroes by embracing a zero-tolerance policy towards littering, speaking up when they see someone littering, and making sure always to recycle their empty beverage containers. This year, the campaign’s ads will be featured throughout the spring and summer months on recycling bins in tourism destinations, city buses, electronic billboards, and television screens in restaurants and supermarkets, as well as in newspapers, on websites and on social media.
Also new in 2021, Encorp is launching a Community Cleanup Grants Program to inspire environmental leadership at the grassroots level by supporting litter cleanup events that beautify beaches, parks, playgrounds, trails, etc. Grants of $500 – which should help cover costs for cleanup event supplies and logistics – are available for teachers, students, workplaces, not-for-profit organizations, community groups and municipal/town citizen-led committees.
Encorp will supply face masks and gloves to each group requesting and receiving a Community Cleanup Grant and feature them as official Recycling Heroes on its website and social media channels. Grants are available on a first-come-first-serve basis. Cleanup events can take place anytime in the spring, summer, or fall. Due to continuing concerns over COVID-19 this year, applicants should plan on keeping their cleanup event very small by limiting the number of participants in line with COVID-19 prevention measures set by New Brunswick Public Health for organizing and hosting an outdoor gathering. They must only hold their cleanup event if their region is under the yellow alert level (or less). They should also be ready and willing to postpone their event to a later date if COVID-19 restrictions suddenly become stricter (move from the yellow to an orange/red alert level or lockdown).
“We are excited about being able to step up our community outreach this year with the launch of the Community Cleanup Grants Program,” says Encorp Atlantic General Manager Pierre Landry. “Our Recycling Hero concept is all about increasing public space recycling and community participation in recycling. We will be launching many more Recycling Hero initiatives in the near future, which will focus on reducing litter in our province’s beautiful outdoor spaces, supporting beverage container recycling in schools, and helping communities use beverage container recycling to raise funds.”
Landry adds that Encorp Atlantic has recycled more than 4.2 billion non-alcoholic beverage containers since the New Brunswick Beverage Containers Program began in 1992. Through this program, beverage product distributors must package their beverages in containers that can be returned to be refilled or recycled.
“It is important to understand that beverage containers are not single-use – they are certainly not meant to end up in landfills nor on the side of the road, in parks, on beaches, or on trails, as litter,” says Landry. “The deposit fee on beverage containers is meant to entice consumers to return them to redemption centres to be recycled or reused. Encorp is an important partner in the Beverage Containers Program. We are able to divert from the waste stream and recycle over 165 million non-alcoholic beverage containers every year on behalf of non-alcoholic beverage product distributors. We want to, and we can increase our beverage container recovery efforts, but we also need the public’s help. We hope this year’s campaign will continue to raise awareness as well as empower New Brunswickers to take action.”
Information on the Community Cleanup Grants Program, recycling beverage containers at redemption centres, as well as “Be a Recycling Hero!” posters that schools, workplaces, and community groups can download, print, and display to support the campaign are available at encorpatl.ca.
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Media inquiries:
Pierre Landry – General Manager – Encorp Atlantic
506.389.7322 pierre@encorpatl.ca
Encorp Atlantic provides used beverage container management services to organizations that distribute deposit-bearing non-alcoholic beverage products in New Brunswick. Encorp Atlantic represents more than 90 non-alcoholic beverage product distributors and is responsible for processing and recycling all non-alcoholic deposit-bearing beverage containers received by redemption centres in the province.