Celebrating 50 years of recycling leadership.

The NRC50 story

More than a sequence of conferences and programs.

NRC's history is the story of a civic institution that helped translate the resource-conservation promise of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) into practical action through coalition building, policy, procurement, markets, measurement, technical assistance, public education and professional development.

Citizens, local and state organizations, businesses, educators, public agencies and practitioners built the social, technical, professional and market infrastructure that moved recycling from scattered local experiments toward a national profession and, today, toward sustainable materials management and circularity.

NRC helped create the connections that let local knowledge, national policy, markets, professional practice and public participation reinforce one another.

Five chapters

From disposal to resource conservation, recycling and circularity.

NRC's history reflects the larger evolution of the field. The NRC50 story is organized in five chapters.

What NRC made possible

A practitioner-led national connector.

NRC50 will show impact, not only activity, across the areas where NRC has connected the field, honoring NRC's role in convening, connecting, catalyzing, professionalizing and scaling the work of a broader movement.

The next chapter

An extension of NRC's founding mission.

NRC's next chapter builds on its founding resource-conservation purpose and carries it into today's circularity agenda:

Share your story

Help us tell the NRC story.

Were you part of NRC's history? Past NRC leaders, affiliates, members and program participants can help bring it to life. We welcome stories and oral histories, photographs, newsletters, programs, reports, policy statements, logos, advertisements and video.

Tell us what you have and how to reach you. We especially want to hear from and about the people behind the work: organizers, operators, educators, students, public workers, entrepreneurs and community members.