Who is a member?
Our members are the local governments of Massachusetts and their elected and appointed leadership.
Greenfield Recycling Outreach Coordinator Sean Kelleher holds the city’s old recycling bins, which will be replaced by new curbside carts, seen to his left and right. (Photo courtesy Athena Lee Bradley)
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded a Solid Waste Infrastructure for Recycling grant of $2 million to the city of Greenfield to overhaul the city’s recycling program.
Greenfield was one of 25 communities awarded grant funding out of an applicant pool of more than 330 communities nationwide, according to the EPA.
The grant funds will be used to convert Greenfield’s existing manually sorted, dual-stream recycling program into a single-stream system using automatic vehicles. The new vehicles are able to hold up to five times the volume of recyclable material as the previous vehicles, while the fully automated collection process reduces hazards to drivers.
The city will also develop and implement a promotional and enforcement campaign to help ensure that all collected materials are suitable for recycling.
The grant will also allow Greenfield to modify its transfer station to accommodate the conversion to single-stream recycling.
The SWIFR Grant program is funded through the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which provided the EPA with a substantial investment to support National Recycling Strategy implementation. This funding targets waste management system and program improvements to enable efficient resource deployment while reducing environmental impact.
Visit the EPA’s website for more information on SWIFR grant projects.