The Hefty EnergyBag Program
The Hefty® EnergyBag® program is a groundbreaking initiative, led by Dow and Reynolds Consumer Products, that collects previously hard-to-recycle plastics at curbside and converts them into valuable energy resources. The program is a significant step towards achieving positive long-term environmental and economic advantages, including fewer plastics ending up in landfills.
Dow and Keep America Beautiful established the Hefty® EnergyBag® Grant to offer communities nationwide the opportunity to implement the Hefty® EnergyBag® program as part of their existing waste management infrastructure.
Cobb County received a $50,000 grant to implement the program in our community. The program is scheduled to launch in late fall 2018 and will be available to customers of American Disposal.
If you are interested in the program, sign up at Hefty® EnergyBag® Sign Up.
Find out more about the program
Participating households place their hard-to-recycle plastics in Hefty® EnergyBag® orange bags. Once full, residents tie the bags and place them in their curbside recycling carts or bins during their regularly-scheduled recycling pick-up.
Participants' current haulers pick up the tied orange bags along with their regular recycling materials and send them to a local materials recovery facility (MRF) for sorting. The MRF then bales the bags and sends them to a local energy recovery facility, which converts plastics into valuable energy resources.
The Environmental Benefits
The Hefty® EnergyBag® program provides many environmental and economic benefits, including:
- The diversion of valuable resources from landfills
- The conversion of waste into alternative energy, which can be used to power businesses, cars and homes
- Improved efficiency of existing mechanical recycling programs by reducing the amount of hard-to-recycle materials going to materials recovery facilities, ultimately improving the quality of recycled materials such as paper and cardboard
- Potential cost savings that aid in the decrease of waste management costs
- The reduction of fossil fuels extracted from the ground
- Increased consumer engagement and education of resource recovery