Southwest Public Recycling Association
Tuscon, Arizona

Four Corner States Recycling Economic Development Project

Under an EPA Regions VIII, IX and VI joint grant as part of the Jobs Through Recycling Grant Program, the Southwest Public Recycling Association contracted with Michael Simpson of DSM to act as project manager for this eighteen-month effort. The project area included the states of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado.

For this project, Mr. Simpson developed and implemented a methodology to bring interested parties from both the economic development field and solid waste management field to the table to create a consensual approach to carrying out the mission of EPA's "Jobs Through Recycling" effort in the Four Corner states. This resulted in creation of a steering committee that pro-actively participated in local implementation activities and provided feedback to the effort of institutionalizing recycling economic development within this region.

The project consisted of four phases. The first phase was to locate three communities in each participating state to develop a recycling economic development demonstration project. The second phase was to create a local committee to participate in a group option development and option choice process for targeting a demonstration project. Once a potential project was chosen, a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis was facilitated utilizing the local committee's knowledge and expertise.

The third phase was to link the realized needs of each potential project (business proponent) with manufacturing, business planning, credit analysis, and regulatory technical assistance expertise that already existed within the region. The final phase of this project was the formal establishment of a regional institutional infrastructure to build upon successes realized in the demonstration projects so as to further the agenda of assisting established businesses to create products with recycled content and developing new businesses to create such products.

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