Consumer Recycling Education and Outreach Grant Program
Funding Agency:
- Environmental Protection Agency
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provides $75 million total from Fiscal Year 2022 to Fiscal Year 2026 for grants to fund a new Recycling Education and Outreach Grant Program.
Applications for Round One of this opportunity opened in 2022, with selectees announced in 2023. The application period for Round Two of this funding opportunity opens in September 2024 and closes on December 20, 2024. (Refer to the "How to Apply" section below for additional details.)
For this second round of REO funding, EPA is focusing on preventing the generation of wasted food and increasing its recycling through composting. The program provides $39 million to fund one cooperative agreement that includes developing and implementing a national consumer wasted food reduction campaign, expanding the market for and sales of compost, and increasing education and outreach to households on composting.
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and other environmental impacts associated with goods result from the energy, land, and water used to produce, transport, consume, and dispose of them. Approximately 55 percent of global GHG emissions stem from the extraction and processing of materials, fuels, and food.1 Reducing, reusing, recycling, and composting are strategies that can lessen the environmental impact of goods. Increasing recycling reduces climate, environmental, and social impacts of materials use, and keeps valuable resources in use instead of in landfills. Municipal solid waste management has long suffered from a lack of investment. Some communities that lack waste management infrastructure do not have recycling programs, which increases the burden on limited landfill capacity and increases greenhouse gas emissions. Recycling refers to the series of activities by which materials, including organic materials, are collected, sorted, processed, and/or converted into raw materials to be used for new products. (Recycling excludes the use of materials solely as a fuel substitute or for energy production.) Composting is one way to recycle organic materials, including food waste. Composting transforms organic materials into a valuable soil amendment - compost - through a controlled, aerobic (oxygen-required) biological decomposition of the organic materials by microorganisms. More than one-third (nearly 100 million tons) of the United States (U.S.) municipal waste stream is organic waste, and of that, sixty-six million tons is wasted food.2 Recycling organic waste (such as food scraps, wood, and yard waste) through composting will drive progress toward EPA’s nationwide goal of a 50% recycling rate by 2030.3 Education and outreach can expand participation in composting programs and reduce contamination in the compost stream, while significantly increasing the amount of residential solid waste recycled. Education and outreach can also expand the markets for compost use, building a more circular economy. Recycling organic waste into a value-added product like compost not only keeps those nutrients circulating within the economy, but it also prevents additional greenhouse gas emissions. Food comprises nearly a quarter of landfilled municipal solid waste.4 When food and other organics decompose in a landfill, they release methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Food waste is responsible for 58% of the landfill methane emissions released to the atmosphere, 5 so preventing and diverting food waste from landfills is an effective strategy to reduce climate emissions.
One cooperative agreement
The total funding for this competitive opportunity is approximately $39,094,000. EPA anticipates awarding only one award that includes all three projects.
December 20, 2024, 11:59 PM (EST)
Claudia Fabiano, U.S. EPA, Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery (MC 5306P), 1301 Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, DC; e-mail: RecyclingEd@epa.gov.