PHOENIX–The Phoenix Zero Waste Team is an extension of the Phoenix government, educating people in the “right way to recycle” according to Amanda Jordan, the Circular Economy Project Manager for the City of Phoenix.

The Zero Waste Team is an educational endeavor promoted by the City of Phoenix to help reach Phoenix’s 2050 sustainability goals.

“The Zero Waste team is the boots-on-the-ground effort to connect with the residents in the community,” Jordan said. “At the end of the day, we're public servants, we're here to serve our residents, and this is a way for them to directly engage with us.”

Through promoting positive recycling habits, the team plans to reach its 50% waste diversion goal by 2030 and have zero waste by 2050, according to Alicia Flores, the Zero Waste Analyst on the Team.

One effort the team takes to educate the community is tabling events and using social media to spread awareness about sustainability.

Teaching “little tidbits of information” such as how to recycle bottles properly can be impactful in educating the community, Flores said.

“Word of mouth is really great,” she said. “Then through education, we found out social media is also very integral with spreading the word about sustainability efforts in general.”

At the events, the Zero Waste Team distributes a “master list” which provides information about all of the materials that are supposed to be recycled and how to correctly recycle them.

Another way that the team makes an effort to educate the community is by offering tours of their recycling facilities every Thursday.

“I think that's where you see the light bulb really go off for people, where they understand that their waste doesn't just go away,” Jordan said.

A typical tour through the facility consists of learning about landfills and their effect on the environment along with seeing the machinery that separates recyclables into the “end product”.

“Anyone can reach out to the team, and we can schedule a time for them to come and check it out,” Jordan said. “That's definitely been the biggest impact, I would say, in education.”

The team is consistently working on including the community in recycling and most recently has launched their “Master Recycling Program”.

The program certifies residents of Phoenix looking to be more involved in sustainability. After getting certified, master recyclers are given access to a sustainability expert who they can speak to about environmental problems within their personal neighborhood or district.

According to Flores, the program is meant to give “checks and balances” to the Phoenix neighborhoods and make volunteers “feel like they are a part of something that's bigger than them.”

According to the City of Phoenix, recyclable collections are offered weekly where recycled materials are brought to the Phoenix Transfer Stations so they can be sorted by the Materials Recovery Facility.         

“If we embed everything into the culture within sustainability, we provide certain outlets for our residents to use properly,” Flores said. “Then we can ultimately reach the Zero Waste school and sustain it over time.”