Background Cooperatives can provide small businesses convenient and affordable access to recycling services. With support from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, under the President’s Climate Change Action Plan, the Northeast Recycling Council (NERC) funded organizations throughout New England to establish pilot projects for small business recycling cooperatives and to develop a model for these cooperatives to be replicated across the country. The Center for Ecological Technology, WasteCap of Massachusetts and WasteCap of New Hampshire, three nonprofit organizations, worked with local business organizations such as Chambers of Commerce and Rotary Clubs to organize small business recycling cooperatives in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection used NERC funding to assist the establishment of five pilot recycling projects in its state. NERC also funded the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management to revise and streamline paper recycling service contracts for all the state agencies to increase revenue and return funds to agencies based on the amount of paper recycled. For more information on establishing small business recycling cooperatives, and for examples of printed materials referenced throughout this Guide, contact the Northeast Recycling Council. The pilot cooperatives discussed in this Guide all focus on the collection of printing and writing papers, although cooperatives can target any recyclable material. Each program in this Guide followed a series of steps to design, implement and monitor its cooperative. These cooperatives experienced economic and geographic challenges and their models were adapted to reflect those challenges. This Guide draws from these experiences to assist future efforts to establish or expand recycling cooperatives. Acknowledgments This Implementation Guide, and the cooperative programs it is based on, were funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the Climate Change Action Plan. Additional funding for this guide was provided by the American Forest and Paper Association. The Guide was prepared by Michael Alexander of the Northeast Recycling Council and Lauren Sharfman of WasteCap of Massachusetts.