Knoxville Wins Cans For Cash Contest

Communications Director

Kristin Farley
[email protected]
(865) 215-2589

400 Main St., Room 691
Knoxville, TN 37902

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Knoxville Wins Cans For Cash Contest

Posted: 01/27/2005
 The City of Knoxville won $5,000 and first-place in its division in the Cans for Cash: City Recycling Challenge sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Mayors and Novelis Inc.

The program challenged like-sized cities to compete against each other in can collection for four $5,000 awards each, and resulted in the collection of nearly 60 tons of cans in Knoxville during the first two weeks in November.

"This award is a tribute to the community working together to promote awareness for aluminum can recycling," Mayor Bill Haslam. "The City will use the prize money to continue to build awareness that it pays off to recycle - both economically and environmentally."

The City of Knoxville created a two-week event called the Great Knoxville Can Pile Up, and worked with non-profit organizations, local schools, government agencies, businesses, and the media to increase can collection during this time period.

Keep Knoxville Beautiful coordinated a contest among fraternities and sororities at the University of Tennessee for the most cans collected. The City of Knoxville and Knox County Solid Waste sponsored a similar contest for Knox County schools. Local television and radio stations promoted the collection with public service announcements. Other sponsors of the event were Habitat for Humanity, Philip Metals, SP Recycling, and Tennessee Metals.

The city won in the Division Two category for cities with populations between 100,000 and 249,999.

Recycling is always a convenient alternative for Knoxville residents. Waste Connections, the City's garbage collector, picks up recyclable items for a nominal fee.