This cohort focuses on programs and infrastructure that will increase access to recycling, divert food scraps from landfills, expand battery recycling and reduce textile waste. Selected teams include local governments, a Tribal community and mission-based non-profits.

• Bay Mills Indian Community (Brimley, MI): Seeking diversion pathways to reduce waste and utilize unused food for animal feed or composting.

• Brookelyn Elisa Promise (Grand Rapids, MI): Launching a youth-led enterprise to divert post-consumer textiles from Michigan landfills and transform them into clean, baled feedstock for recycling.

• City of Big Rapids and Mecosta Recycles (Big Rapids, MI): Expanding its successful household battery recycling drop-off program to additional city facilities.

• Oakland HOPE (Pontiac, MI): Launching HOPE to Table Collective, focused on transforming surplus food into nutritious meals distributed to food pantry clients.

• Recycle Ann Arbor (Ann Arbor, MI): Piloting a container reuse program that will collect, industrially wash, inspect, and redistribute glass bottles and jars for local food and beverage producers, retailers, and institutional kitchens.

• Recycle Here! (Detroit, MI): Seeking to increase revenue streams of Detroit’s only free public drop-off recycling center.

• St. Suzanne Cody Rouge Community Resource Center (Detroit, MI): Establishing the Hub of Recycling and Awareness to build a shared recycling culture and increase material diversion across the community.

• ZeroWaste.Org (Ann Arbor, MI): Deploying a gamified waste-reduction platform that enables residents to sign up, earn points, and win prizes based on their waste and recycling behavior.

This cohort is working on projects ranging from redistribution of surplus food, reuse and recovery of construction materials, conversion of thermoplastics and more.

• Commercial Solar Panel Recycling (Phillipsburg, NJ): Aims to establish a Michigan location dedicated to complete solar panel recycling and processing.

• Detroit Decontaminated (Detroit, MI): Establishing a scalable pilot and integrated tracking and reporting platform that recovers surplus food and organic kitchen waste generated by restaurants for redistribution as prepared meals, upcycled food production, and compost.

• Drop N Bins, LLC (Caseville, MI): Expanding its existing roll-off dumpster rental business to include a dedicated construction and demolition material recovery and reuse program.

• Ecourage USA, Inc (East Lansing, MI): Aims to expand its refill stations for liquid home and personal care products into Michigan-based retailers, hospitality, campus, and institutional locations.

• Fibrill (Holland, MI): Deploying modular equipment at material recovery facilities or as a scalable extension to paper mills that allows for efficient separation and recovery of fiber from coated paper packaging.

• Meknology (Kalamazoo, MI): Utilizes patented equipment to convert organic waste generated by breweries and distilleries into drinking water, soil amendments and ingredients that can be upcycled into non-alcoholic beverages and dried grain products.

• ReVamp Clothing Swap Festival (Detroit, MI): Seeking to scale its quarterly clothing swap festivals into a multi-city network with permanent community thrift hubs and textile recovery systems.

• Revolin Sports Inc. (Holland, MI): Seeking to scale operations that convert post-consumer and industrial thermoplastics into high-performance honeycomb core panels.