This Is the State Where People Recycle the Most

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 16, 9:30AM EST

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This Is the State Where People Recycle the Most — © KatarzynaBialasiewicz / iStock

Recycling began decades ago as a way to help keep the environment clean. It also gave companies a ready means to get materials they could use to make new products, particularly containers. As the trend evolved, companies even paid people to deposit materials at established locations.

Recycling has become a way of life. Keeping cans and bottles that can be reused is part of daily life. People even keep trash bins dedicated to recyclable materials.

Among the sources for Filter King’s recently released “Cleanest States: Which States Are the Cleanest Places to Visit” study was the Eunomia report, which tracks recycling rates. Air quality was taken from the World Population Review, EV data was taken from EVAdoption and Google Keyword Planner was used to track the use of the term “hand sanitizer.” In all, the data was sorted into 10 categories.

The first cut at the data was simply the “cleanest states” based on a scale of 1 to 10. California topped the list with a score of 7.36, followed by Hawaii (6.94) and Washington (6.40). Turning to “dirtiest states,” Kentucky was the worst with a score of 2.12, followed by Tennesse (2.20), Mississippi (2.25) and Alabama (2.28).
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No explanation was given about why southern states did so poorly. Perhaps the description of Tennessee gives some insight:

Tennessee has the second lowest cleanliness score of just 2.20. A combination of low recycling rates, poor air quality, and low levels of electric vehicle adoption keeps Tennessee near the bottom of the table.

Recycling was at the core of the ratings. The rating was based on the percentage of “common container and packaging materials (CCPM)” that is recycled. Maine topped the list at 74%. This was followed by Oregon (66%) and Connecticut (63%). Once again, there was no analysis of geographic patterns.

These are the 10 states that recycle the most:

Maine (74%)
Oregon (66%)
Connecticut (63%)
Vermont (62%)
Iowa (62%)
New Jersey (62%)
Minnesota (60%)
Pennsylvania (60%)
Delaware (59%)
Washington (58%)

Click here to see which are America’s 50 dirtiest cities.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.