Abby Unten

Review of Eureka Recycling

This week, Priscilla Villa-Watt and Kat Lund from ...

This week, Priscilla Villa-Watt and Kat Lund from Eureka Recycling joined our virtual class meeting. Priscilla is the Advocacy Manager and Kat is the Director of Community Engagement. Eureka is one of four non-profit recyclers in the United States. They collect recycling for St. Paul, Lauderdale, Shoreview, and Roseville and have seven different material recycling facilities. This is rare because in a lot of other cities, especially large cities, there are only one or two material recycling facilities. They keep about 90% of the materials they collect, which is 450 tons per day or 100,000 tons per year. They are passionate about holding manufacturers responsible for the products they make and advocating for extended producer responsibility laws such as the break free from plastics pollution act and the zero waste act. They also have an app for smartphones that has an index that tells you what you can and cannot recycle, which I think is very useful and convenient. It is beneficial for everyone to understand recycling procedures in their region and I think Eureka Recycling is doing very important work in the Twin Cities.