• Solid waste education, awareness, and promotion
• Contracts for residential recycling efforts
• Funding publicly-operated drop-off, curbside, and buy-back programs
• Yardwaste management programs
• Labor, equipment, and materials to support recycling programs
• Waste reduction activities
• Buying recycled

Of the 44 political subdivisions that participate in the RRI program, 21 use RRI funds to pay for their curbside recycling contracts. The remaining communities do not contract with a private hauler for waste/recycling collection. Therefore, these communities can only use RRI funds for education, yardwaste management, "clean up days", purchase of recycled-content materials, or waste reduction activities. Furthermore, several of these communities have extremely high recycling rates which translates into more RRI funds. With these communities, it is extremely difficult to spend all of their RRI funds without building up a surplus.

Solution:

The District will widen the scope of allowable uses of RRI funds to accommodate those communities that have surpluses. Those communities will be required to fill out a brief request form (see attached) prior to expending funds. The District will respond to all requests within 72 hours. Communities must show that they have already expended RRI funds for the core activities (i.e., buying recycled, education, etc.).

All surplus RRI funds expended must be related (directly or indirectly) to solid waste management. The following is an example of a project that would be approved by the District: paying architectural fees for design of "green buildings."

Request for Use of Surplus RRI Dollars