Cashing in: the Cans for Cash City Recycling Challenge is helping bring attention, and funding, to aluminum can recycling.

Despite the inherent value of aluminum cans, a significant number are lost to the landfill each year. This represents nearly $1 billion in buried value.

In an effort to address this loss, Alcan began the Cans for Cash program in 2004 in partnership with the U.S. Conference of Mayors, a nonpartisan organization of cities with populations of 30,000 or more. Today, Atlanta-based Novelis, a spin-off of Alcan and a global leader in aluminum rolling and can recycling, continues the competition.

Cans for Cash pits cities of like populations against one another in a competition for cash prizes. There are four population divisions: division one, 250,000 and above; division two, 100,000-249,999; division three, 50,000-99,999; and division four, up to 49,999.

The cities that collect the most cans in each division are awarded $5,000 to further recycling efforts.

A second category recognizes cities for their innovative ideas promoting aluminum beverage can recycling, awarding them $5,000 each.

JOINING FORCES

Pat Persico, Novelis manager of media relations and communications for North America, says the idea for the Cans for Cash program began with the desire to build municipalities' awareness about aluminum can recycling at a time when many cities were eliminating their curbside recycling programs. "We wanted to bring awareness to the value and infinite recyclability of aluminum cans," Persico says. "We wanted to bring that visibility to city leaders."

Because the company was trying to get the attention of city leaders, joining forces with the U.S. Conference of Mayors was a logical step. "It was a perfect fit," Persico says. "They have no other programs like this and have membership from mayors in cities of all sizes."

Cans for Cash is "a good way to get the message out to those people who are responsible for recycling" in a city, according to Susan Jarvis of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Depending on the mayor's interest in recycling, sometimes the competition results in a top-down approach and other times it's a bottom-up approach, catching the attention of the recycling coordinators in a city first, she says.

To further encourage community participation in 2006, Keep America Beautiful (KAB) joined the Cans for Cash partnership. KAB is a nonprofit community improvement and educational organization that focuses on litter prevention, community improvement and beautification and waste reduction.

With the addition of Keep America Beautiful to the program's sponsors, a new category has been added to the Cans for Cash program that encourages cities to partner with their local KAB affiliates to create an innovative and sustainable recycling initiative promoting the recycling of aluminum beverage cans. Winning cities receive $5,000, and the supporting KAB affiliate is eligible for a $2,500 award.

Rob Wallace, VP of communications for Keep America Beautiful, says, "Our affiliates are always working with local governments," making participation in Cans for Cash ideal. The KAB award also serves to add "another dimension" to the program, he says, by increasing "the quality of the submissions they are getting." He adds, "The recycling community in general is looking toward events that will have a lasting impact."

Persico says Cans for Cash was a "nice fit" with the KAB's overall mission and helps to expand the competition's reach.

THE COMPETITION

Persico says the Cans for Cash competition resonates with city leaders because they find value in awards programs that bring recognition among peers.

The competition itself is a two-week campaign. The 2006 event ran from Sept. 15 to Sept. 30. "When cities run an event or things that need [publicity], keeping things in a concise time frame is the way to go," Persico says of the program's approach.

At the U.S. Conference of Mayors mid-year conference, each mayor in attendance is presented a packet with information on the competition. Novelis also runs ads promoting Cans for Cash in publications of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Direct mail and telephone efforts target recycling coordinators in each city, as well. Novelis provides the funding for the promotional efforts as well as for the cash awards.

The cans are collected through the communities' existing infrastructure, which means Novelis doesn't always get the cans that are recovered for recycling. "We just want to get those cans back into the bigger system," Persico says. "We want people to get those cans recycled."

Milwaukee has won the volume-based competition since the program's inception in 2004, while Louisville has won in the innovation category twice.

Milwaukee collected 1.15 million pounds of aluminum cans in 2006.

Rick Meyers, recycling manager, environmental services, for Milwaukee, credits the people of Milwaukee with the city's success. "It is really a testament to the citizens of Milwaukee," Meyers says. "People have traditionally used the independent scrap yards and taken a lot of material there." He adds, "We have a very strong scrapper ethic."

Milwaukee is able to use the weight of the aluminum cans collected through its curbside recycling program as well as that of the cans collected through private, independent recyclers, who provide receipts for their transactions to Meyers.

Meyers says, "We are continuing to look at ways to improve our recycling program. Recycling has leveled off or declined in a lot of communities." He adds, "We appreciate this contest because it is a way to get into the press about recycling and get it in front of people."

Persico says the Cans for Cash program should be fairly easy for cities that already have a recycling program in place to manage. "It's a great way to bring visibility to recycling and to add additional value to it," she says.

For those cities that find it difficult to compete on volume, the competition offers the innovation category. "It gives cities that feel they can't win on volume the opportunity to implement something from a campaign perspective that is unique and reaches the average person," Persico says.

"It's a more competitive arena for certain cities," she says of the innovation category.

LOOKING AHEAD

Novelis and the U.S. Conference of Mayors are working on a survey for program participants that Persico says may help organizers understand why total cans collected in year three declined from a high of 107 million cans collected in 2005 to 82.3 million. "We want to find out so we can build momentum for the program," she says.

The waning volume can be attributed in part to the decline in participating cities. In 2006, 33 cities participated in Cans for Cash, a marked decline from the 61 cities that competed in 2005. "We want to know if we are competing for visibility or time," Persico says. "We want to get to the root of it. We feel it is a good program for cities and we want them to feel the same way."

The author is managing editor of Recycling Today and can be reached at [e-mail].