May the Best City Win

SC Johnson has partnered with Recyclebank to launch the SC Johnson Green Choices Recycling Challenge. The program encourages 50 communities, one in each state, to compete for the highest recycling participation rate during the six-month challenge. The winning community will receive a $100,000 grant from SC Johnson.

"Companies have a responsibility to make more environmentally conscious products and operate more sustainably, but we also need to find ways to inspire families and help them to make green choices, like recycling, an everyday action, said Fisk Johnson, Chairman and CEO of SC Johnson, in a press release. "The SC Johnson Green Choices Recycling Challenge along with our recently announced Sustainable Behavior Change Program will help us to better understand what motivates people to change their actions when it comes to waste reduction."

The SC Johnson Sustainable Behavior Change Program is a five-year research project that will bring together academics, environmentalists and consumers in an effort to identify what drives behavior change around a number of sustainable actions. Overlaying consumer-action programs will test different message techniques across communities to understand what motivates that behavior change. The program's initial research will dovetail with the SC Johnson Green Choices Recycling Challenge.

While the challenge aims to increase consumers' recycling, it will also contribute to SC Johnson's goal of becoming landfill neutral by 2016. Through operational commitments as well as with the help of Recyclebank and communities, across the country, the company plans to eliminate or divert more than 480 million pounds of waste from the nation's landfills, which is equivalent to more than its U.S. waste footprint. The company defines its waste footprint as all its U.S. manufacturing, office and consumer packaging waste and shipping materials.

The 50 new communities involved in the SC Johnson Green Choices Challenge will join more than 300 communities across the U.S. and the U.K. that have implemented Recyclebank programs. Recyclebank members earn points for recycling, which can be used to "shop" at Recyclebank.com for rewards such as discounts and deals from hundreds of reward partners in more than 10 categories including food and beverage, health, beauty, home, clothing, accessories and gifts from national retailers and restaurants.

"At Recyclebank, we believe that the key to unlocking the greatest environmental impact depends on businesses, government and communities working together to inspire and motivate everyday green actions," said Jonathan Hsu, chief executive officer at Recyclebank, in a press release. "Through our partnership with SC Johnson and our growing network of municipalities, we can reach an even wider audience to better educate and incentivize a daily routine to the benefit our environment, one small step at a time."

Communities participating in the SC Johnson Green Choices Recycling Challenge include:

A leaderboard at www.recyclebank.com/greenchoices will track progress each month, and the winning community will be announced in January 2013. To learn more about SC Johnson's sustainability efforts, visit www.scjohnson.com/greenchoices, follow them on Twitter @SCJGreenChoices or access its 2011 Public report at www.scjohnson.com/2011Report