City receives 2017 SWANA Excellence Award

Public Works Director Mike Murphy announced the City’s receipt of a 2017 Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA) Excellence Award at last night’s City Council meeting. The award was presented to members of the City’s Public Works Department at SWANA’s annual conference, which took place September 23-28 in Baltimore, Maryland. The 2017 awards honored programs and facilities in 13 different categories, spanning many facets of the municipal solid waste industry. The City received the Bronze award in the Communication, Education & Marketing Tools category for the All In. Recycling Simplified. campaign, which used a variety of methods ranging from YouTube videos to billboards to promote the new recycling program and change customer behavior.

“The City of Greenville transitioned its curbside recycling program from a dual-stream, manual collection system with an 18-gallon recycling bin to a single-stream, automated collection system with a 95-gallon roll cart, executing one of the Solid Waste Division’s largest infrastructure and programmatic changes in recent history,” said Murphy. “Realizing that the success of this major conversion — which required the purchase of three automated side-loader collection trucks and 16,000 95-gallon carts (one for each household served by the City) — was largely, if not solely, dependent on effectively educating and engaging the public, our Solid Waste/Recycling staff worked with the City’s Public Information Division to craft a comprehensive public education and awareness campaign.”

SWANA serves more than 9,000 members throughout North America, and thousands more with conferences, certifications, publications and technical training courses. Its Excellence Awards Program recognizes outstanding solid waste programs and facilities that advance the practice of environmentally and economically sound solid waste management through their commitment to utilizing effective technologies and processes in system design and operations, advancing worker and community health and safety and implementing successful public education and outreach programs. Programs also must demonstrate that they are fiscally and environmentally responsible through their compliance with all applicable federal, state and local regulations.

“The recipients of the SWANA Excellence Awards represent the best solid waste management practices in North America today,” said David Biderman, SWANA Executive Director and CEO. “Award winners represent the most innovative and dynamic organizations throughout North America as judged by their peers, and community leaders should be very proud of the valuable contributions that these projects provide to their citizens.”