WM Recycle Corp Interns Promote Sustainability Across Western Washington

Communities across King, Snohomish and Kitsap counties are recycling with greater confidence after nine college interns from the WM Recycle Corps dedicated their summer to educating thousands of residents and hundreds of businesses. Through community events, door-to-door outreach at multifamily properties and technical assistance visits at businesses, the students worked to empower 20 communities to Recycle Right® and reduce waste.

The summer internship started in 2012 and is part of WM's innovative, award-winning recycling education program to help improve recycling behaviors and reduce contamination.

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June through August, the WM interns attended 33 community festivals and farmers markets and went door-to-door at 3,600 multifamily households to answer questions, distribute educational materials and multilingual resources, and teach families how to properly compost, recycle and reduce waste at home. The interns helped residents with hard-to-recycle items by hosting drop-off events for recyclables that are not accepted in curbside carts.

They also tagged recycling carts to remind residential customers what's accepted in curbside recycling programs. In the City of Kirkland alone, the WM interns tagged more than 5,000 carts. Cart tagging provides residents with direct feedback and connects the education message directly to the recycling cart. Studies have demonstrated that cart tagging can improve recycling behaviors and reduce contamination in recycling carts.*

At 780 restaurants and other businesses, the WM interns worked with employees to organize recycling and composting systems, improving efficiency and reducing contamination.

To support the region's multicultural communities, WM recruited interns who could provide recycling education in multiple languages. This helped reduce barriers at community events and when the interns visited multifamily properties and businesses.

The 2026 program included students studying environmental science, ecology, biology, business and public policy from the University of Washington, University of Maryland, Cornell University, Pitzer College, Pomona College, California Baptist University, University of Massachusetts Global and National Taiwan University.

*WM, "Snohomish County Contamination Reduction Cart Tag Study" (December 2023)