Will County Recycling Specialist Marta Keane has been honored with the Steve Apotheker Recycler of the Year award by the Illinois Recycling Foundation.
The award celebrates leaders who promote recycling and waste reduction initiatives across the state. Keane was honored for nearly 40 years of building partnerships that define recycling in Illinois, including in Will County and the Naperville area, a news release on the award said.
Among her accomplishments was helping grow a household hazardous waste collection program in Naperville after the city’s public works and fire departments piloted a collection program.
In 1995, Keane was hired by Naperville and worked for several years as the city’s only environmental programs administrator, where she ran what became the busiest household hazardous waste collection site in the U.S.
It’s still the busiest in Illinois and collects a variety of waste, including oil-based paint, auto fluids, pool chemicals, cleaning chemicals, fertilizers and more, Keane said.
She also was instrumental in the midwest’s first large-scale electronics recycling event in Naperville in 1996 when home computer use was expanding. This was years before e-waste recycling was common and before anyone knew the environmental impact of electronic waste, she said.
Keane also advocated for the Electronics Extended Producer Responsibility law in which the manufacturer of electronics helps pay to have these items collected and recycled.
Keane has worked to advance other legislation, including promoting the passage of the Paint Stewardship Act to collect and recycle latex paint, and the Portable and Medium-Format Battery Stewardship Act, which requires battery producers to fund collection and recycling of batteries.
Keane said she was one of several people promoting battery awareness on social media because too often lithium ion batteries caused fires in garbage trucks, dumpsters or sorting facilities.
She established the willcountygreen.com website in 2010. It became a model for websites providing a one-stop location on environmental issues, including recycling, water conservation and energy efficiency. When the website launched, it was considered innovative and has grown to include hundreds of pages of searchable information.
Keane has been Will County’s Recycling Specialist for about 20 years.
