City of Orlando

2020 Recycle Florida Today Environmental Sustainability Award Winner

Recycle Florida Today, Inc. (RFT) celebrated five local Florida programs for their outstanding waste reduction and recycling efforts as finalists for the Recycle Florida Today Environmental Sustainability Awards, RFTES for short. The RFTES award displays outstanding organizations in the field of recycling and environmental sustainability. Pursuing significantly increased awareness and the ability to motivate others to maximize their recycling, composting, grass-roots efforts, waste reduction, sustainability efforts and improving their recycling rates through education, outreach, and by example. This year’s finalists highlighted residential, educational, corporate, government/non-profit partnership, and multi-family program shares. The finalists were the City of Orlando, the City of Tampa, Coca-Cola Beverages Florida, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the Florida Recycling Partnership, and Sarasota County. Finalists came together for a webinar share on July 21, and offered education and information to participants about their programs. During the webinar session, the 2020 winner of the coveted award in the categories of Outstanding Public Program and Environmental Program of the Year were announced. Both distinctions were awarded to the City of Orlando!

About the City of Orlando
“City of Orlando employees Digna Rivera and Evan Novell presented on the Recycling Quality Index(RQI); a tool used to measure changes in recycling behavior as a result of education based intervention. Digna presented on how the RQI informed the results of her residential recycling contamination study – mainly focusing on the Engelwood neighborhood. Evan presented on the modification to the RQI to be applied to the multifamily setting. He discussed his findings from the joint project conducted last summer with The Recycling Partnership and How 2 Recycling labeling. It was explained that the main significance of this work is found in its ability to be replicated. For both public and private entities with constrained resources, the RQI framed methodology allows for good data capture with low resource expenditure. Further adding value to this project is the concept of fluidity and flexibility built into the framework – the RQI can be adapted specific to each environment it is being applied.”

Congratulations to this year’s winner, the City of Orlando, and all of our finalists for your contributions in helping to keep Florida sustainable!