By Sammi Montgomery
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (UATV) – The state of Arkansas ranks 42nd in the nation in recycling rates. The city of Fayetteville and the state’s officials are creating new initiatives to combat placing low on the rankings.
Fayetteville is starting a new recycling bin program next month that shifts residents from separating recyclable materials to being able to commingle them.
“Instead of having carts that are going to be hand sorted… now we’re going to be taking that on,” Heather Ellzey, environmental educator of Fayetteville Recycling and Trash, said.
But the issue of recycling is much deeper than just accessibility for residents, state officials say, it is on each city itself to fix the rates of recycling.
“There is not really an infrastructure statewide in place for the state of Arkansas and the reason for that is, we are such a rural state. It really comes down to cities, counties, and private industries that are doing the recycling [management],” Keep Arkansas Beautiful Program Coordinator Robyn Taylor said.
In locations like Fayetteville, there is one group that are ostracized in the recycling realm: apartment residents. There are only 12 apartments with access to onsite recycling options in the entire city.
“With our apartments, trying to figure out what that looks like and work with confined spaces has been a real challenge,” Ellzey said.
Research shows that the lack of access caused by challenges heavily impacts whether tenants contribute to the recycling bin.
“The number one reported constraint [to recycling] was the lack of bins, services and availability,” Sara Svensson, an honors research student, said.
Svensson, a University of Arkansas senior earning her degree in landscape architecture, focused her thesis entirely on recycling in Fayetteville. And she isn’t the only one conducting research on the topic.
Sun Ferriara, a biological and food science engineer, is one UA professor that focuses on how plastic packaging affects the human body and environment. But there is hope, he says, to ensure the safety of the planet and health.
“We can work on educating on reducing, reusing as possible, this will create a stronger society that is not kind of hostage to our packaging,” he said.
Recycling can also serve as a connector for some communities.
“When I moved here to Arkansas to go to school, not having a recycling bin made me feel disconnected from my culture and how I grew up,” Svensson said.
Keep Arkansas Beautiful gets communities across the state involved with the Greatest American Cleanup, which collected over 210,000 pounds of trash in 2025, including large portions of recyclables.
Communities that utilize recycling also raise questions about where their recycling goes once it’s thrown in the bin.
“There have been a lot of conversations in different communities across the country and in our state about what is happening into the recycling once it is being sent off,” Ellzey said. “Being able to have that transparency and to be able to connect with our residents, and that we know where our recycling is going and is being turned into new materials.”
The city of Fayetteville has hopes that the new recycling program with commingled bins will increase rates of use as well as create new ways to connect with the community.