The National Waste & Recycling Association (NWRA) has named six recipients of its 2026 Recycling Awards, with a 95 million Canadian dollar rebuild of a fire-damaged Quebec MRF, a 60-acre closed-loop organics campus in Connecticut and a national paper-cup recovery partnership between WM and Starbucks heading the slate.

NWRA will present the awards Jan. 20, 2027, at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville during its annual Industry Conference.

"NWRA's 2026 Recycling Awards recognize what is possible when innovation is paired with investment, collaboration and a commitment to results," NWRA President and CEO Michael E. Hoffman said. "These recipients are solving real-world challenges, strengthening recycling systems and finding new ways to recover valuable materials."

What does the GFL Montreal-Est MRF bring to the slate?

GFL Environmental's Montreal-Est facility, named Recycling Facility of the Year, opened in January 2025 on the site of a 2022 fire. The plant serves approximately 1.3 million residents and handles roughly 25 percent of Quebec's curbside recycling stream.

• 95 million CAD investment (about $66.6 million)
• 220,450 tons per year processing capacity
• 17 AI-enabled optical sorters, dual processing lines, advanced film recovery
• Joint investment with Éco Entreprises Québec under the province's EPR framework

What does the Southington organics campus actually do?

Circular Services took Organics Management Facility of the Year for a Connecticut campus assembled through a 2025 acquisition. The site combines the Northeast's largest food and beverage de-packaging operation with the longest continuously operating anaerobic digester in North America, NWRA said.

• 60-acre closed-loop campus integrating depackaging, digestion, composting, hauling and soil production
• 100,000 tons/year food and beverage waste capacity
• 500,000 cubic yards/year leaf and yard waste capacity
• Enough renewable natural gas to power more than 800 homes
• 5,000 tons of CO₂ emissions avoided annually
• 57 local jobs; 200,000 yards of compost, mulch and soil marketed, including 2.5 million bags per year
• Connecticut currently exports about 40 percent of its waste for disposal

How is the WM-Starbucks cup program changing the recyclables list?

WM and Starbucks earned the Game Changer Partnership award for the Cups To-Go initiative, which added paper and polypropylene (No. 5 PP) cold cups to WM's accepted materials. The program helped PP cups earn the How2Recycle Widely Recyclable designation, defined as access for at least 60 percent of U.S. households.

• $1.4 billion in WM recycling infrastructure investment backs the rollout
• More than 2 million households gained access within four months
• Nearly 150 communities updated local recycling guidelines
• 6.9 million people reached through national awareness campaign
• PP is generated at HDPE-comparable rates but historically recycled at a fraction of that rate

What distinguishes the other three recipients?

Project ReWear won Excellence in Sustainability Public Education for a textile waste prevention program pairing donation and resale with impact tracking.

• 7,400-plus transactions logged
• 3,500-plus customers engaged
• ~25,000 pounds of textiles measured
• 1,500-plus pounds of clothing redistributed at no cost

Rumpke Waste & Recycling took Excellence in Recycling Public Education for "Building Trust in Our Industry," anchored by the Rumpke Education Center developed with the Center of Science and Industry (COSI).

• 272 recycling facility tours, 3,254 participants
• 72 landfill tours, 1,353 participants
• 106 events reaching about 20,000 people in 2025
• 972 educational social posts, nearly 2 million impressions
• 9.2 million website views; 74,908 recycling-focused page views
• Fan club membership above 4,800

CP Group's Auger Silo earned Recycling Equipment Innovator of the Year for an automated storage and feed system replacing bottleneck-prone silos at MRFs.

• Up to 30 percent increase in storage capacity
• Baler utilization from ~70 percent to more than 90 percent
• Estimated operational benefit above $700,000 per processing line annually

What milestone comes next?

NWRA will formally present the six awards Jan. 20, 2027, at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, with Hoffman and all recipients on stage. The next verifiable checkpoint: whether GFL's 220,450-ton Montreal-Est throughput, Circular Services' 100,000-ton Southington organics capacity, and the WM-Starbucks program's expansion of PP cup acceptance beyond two million households produce documented year-over-year recovery gains when NWRA opens its next awards cycle.