A combination of EPA and USDA funding has resulted in numerous changes throughout the city, including free commercial recycling service, residential recycling carts and organics infrastructure.

Providence, Rhode Island, is starting to see tangible results from multiple organics and recycling programs funded by federal grants.

This work was spurred by $3.34 million from the U.S. EPA’s Solid Waste Infrastructure for Recycling grant program awarded in 2023, as well as $255,850 from a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant awarded in 2024. Now, multiple years in, the city has funded new vehicles, carts and other infrastructure.

Back in November 2023, Mayor Brett Smiley described the EPA funding as a big opportunity to advance sustainability efforts.

“By helping divert food waste, in particular, from the waste stream we can extend the life of our Central Landfill, but also help meet our climate justice goals,” he said at a November 2023 Northeast Recycling Council event. Smiley noted this would also help address recycling issues.

“We know that we’ve got a major education gap to fill with residents and business owners. The recycling rates in the city of Providence are quite low [and] there’s a very clear equity gap in terms of which neighborhoods recycle and how.”

Commercial recycling

One unique aspect of Providence’s grant-funded programs is free commercial recycling service, which is still coming to fruition.

In his NERC speech, Mayor Smiley noted this idea was driven in part by “a problem with overflowing dumpsters” that “degrades the quality of life” in certain commercial areas with a lot of restaurants.

The SWIFR grant, which has funding until January 2027, helped fund the purchase of a rearload recycling collection truck for approximately $200,000. This truck is run by the city’s Department of Public Works and initially focused on offering free service in two neighborhoods.

Federal Hill and the West End were chosen for their high density and proliferation of restaurants. Participants can receive two to three carts, which will be collected twice per week. The Center for EcoTechnology is helping manage the outreach and technical assistance for this as well as a separate technical assistance program for commercial organics.

Kevin Proft, Providence’s deputy director of sustainability, said in a recent interview there was a long lead time to procure the truck and progress has been slower than hoped. The city’s goal was to recruit up to 75 businesses, but so far about 10 had signed on as of early April. This is yielding an estimated half a ton to 1 ton per week.

“Surprisingly, we haven’t been able to get businesses to jump at the opportunity as easily as we thought we would,” said Proft, adding the pitch is “it could potentially reduce your hauling costs by reducing the amount of waste in your dumpster.”

Lorenzo Macaluso, chief growth officer for CET, said his team is working to create testimonials of participating businesses and plans to continue expanding outreach. The city is also looking at potentially expanding the program to include other neighborhoods.

“Sometimes selling a free thing is harder than you think ... what we find is decision makers often need to hear things more than once,” he said. Macaluso also noted some businesses may feel recycling creates extra work, even when technical assistance is available to help with bin setup and signage.

“So we’re trying to compress that learning curve as much as possible and give them those tools, but that perception is hard to overcome.”

Residential recycling

Providence has an estimated 2.4% recycling rate and 47% contamination rate, despite prior goals to reach 30% by 2020 as well as “eliminate contaminated recycling” by 2030.

The city recently began rolling out 55,000 new curbside recycling carts, along with an updated citywide education campaign, in an effort to reverse these trends.

This came together with $1.8 million of EPA SWIFR funding, $625,000 from The Recycling Partnership and $5 million in financing from Closed Loop Partners’ Catalytic Capital & Private Credit Group. That latter commitment was backed by American Beverage’s Every Bottle Back initiative.

The carts align with a new curbside collection contract awarded to WM last summer. That contract included an amendment stipulating the company pay $50,000 for recycling education in the first year and offer services at that value in the following years. A WM spokesperson confirmed that education funding is managed by the city. 

Another new aspect of this contract was the inclusion of WM’s Smart Truck camera technology in collection vehicles. This allows for targeted contamination monitoring and education feedback.

Keefe Harrison, CEO of The Recycling Partnership, said during a recent interview this would allow for more targeted education efforts and reduce some of the need for manual cart checks or tagging.

“We will be able to use cameras in the trucks to identify households that are doing a great job recycling versus the ones that are having a harder time, and then target those ‘oops’ tags for the ones that are having the harder time.”

WM confirmed this is the first deployment of its technology in New England, following prior launches in other parts of the country. Proft said data reliability has been inconsistent for certain routes, but was optimistic about its long-term potential.

“The sensors are a little bit sensitive and they’ve been breaking ... there seems to be a myriad reasons that we’re struggling to really get that running smoothly,” he said, while noting that “even the data we’re getting now is useful based on the capacity.”

“WM is happy to be deploying this new technology in the City of Providence. With any new program there will be an implementation period, but we are pleased with the process so far and are excited about its future,” said Garrett Trierweiler, a regional director of public affairs for WM, via email.

Organics

In 2019, the city set a goal to “eliminate food waste” by 2040. The recent federal funding has been used to help boost processing infrastructure, collection and education.

Providence dedicated approximately $200,000 of SWIFR funding to support Groundwork Rhode Island’s West End Compost Hub. The site, an in-vessel composting project, is currently under construction and could open later this summer, according to Groundwork. 

USDA funding also helped cover five new organics drop-off sites managed by Groundwork, raising its total network to 16 sites.

On the commercial side, SWIFR funding helped purchase two trucks for Remix Organics, a hauler in the city. This included a unique vacuum truck to collect brewery wastewater, which had become a concern for state regulators due to how it was previously managed.

“They had more more customers asking for their service than they could service,” said Proft, describing this as an opportunity to “help our local economy by supporting this local business and also diverting more food waste from the landfill through these big chunks of commercial businesses.”

Additionally, USDA funding covered a contract for CET to conduct outreach and education to businesses about organics recycling. This helped line up customers with vendors such as Remix and start collection service at a notable new location, the Rhode Island Convention Center.

Other areas covered by the USDA grant included education that led an estimated 350 new households to participate in subscription pickups or free dropoff sites, as well as mentorship for setting up backyard composting at about 60 households. The grant also helped the Rhode Island School Recycling project set up food recovery and organics recycling at multiple elementary schools.

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