Earth911 turns 35 in 2026. We invited Trey Granger, who worked at Earth911 from 2007 to 2014 as the site’s first content editor, and whoe also oversaw expansion of the recycling directory, to share some of the highlights of the continuing journey to an easy to understand recycling system.

Earth911 turns 35 years old in 2026 (but we don’t look a day over 30). To celebrate, here are 35 fun facts about your favorite low-waste resource.

1. At 35 years old, Earth911 predates several well-established recycling brands, including America Recycles Day (founded in 1997), Call2Recycle (1994), the Product Stewardship Institute (2000), the Recycle Guys (1992), and the Sustainable Packaging Coalition (2004).

2. Initially launched on October 29, 1991, the recycling directory originally featured only one material: motor oil. It also only listed recycling locations in Arizona.

3. The World Wide Web was still in its infancy in 1991, so the original search platform was the toll-free 1-800-CLEANUP.

4. Before 1-800-CLEANUP, states and municipalities were maintaining their own localized recycling directories. In California alone, there were 248 different environmental hotlines to provide recycling information across a range of materials.

5. 1-800-CLEANUP had some early celebrity endorsements. In the 1990s, Mario Andretti, Ted Danson, and Steven Seagal (among others) recorded public service announcements for the company on the importance of motor oil recycling.

6. The Earth911 website first launched in 1996, via the domain name cleanup.org. By then, the directory contained nationwide recycling information for over 100 materials.

7. The name Earth911 came about thanks to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which referred to the recycling directory as “Earth’s 911,” a call-to-action regarding the urgency to reduce America’s waste. The name stuck, and the EPA also helped support the nationwide expansion of the recycling directory via a grant.

8. While today we may take for granted the technology of GPS and turn-by-turn directions, Earth911 was ahead of the curve in its early days. Using ArcView software, all recycling center addresses were geocoded in the directory so consumers could enter their ZIP code and find nearby recycling locations.

9. Earth911 has always relied on partnerships with thousands of local government recycling officials, who are granted remote access to update their curbside and drop-off recycling information in the directory.

10. As one of the earliest web-based directories, Earth911 has always enjoyed strong search engine optimization. For years, it was the #1 search result on Google for terms like “recycle” and “prevent global warming,” outranking popular resources like the EPA and Wikipedia.

11. Earth911 had an outside-the-box approach to advertise its free recycling directory. It partnered with consumer product companies including ExxonMobil and Yellowbook to provide a recycling call-to-action on packaging so customers would know where to recycle their products.

12. The directory wasn’t always just a resource for recycling information. In its early tenure, it featured electric vehicle charging stations and marine bilge pump out locations.

13. Earth911 Founder Chris Warner was also an animal lover. In 1999, he utilized Earth911’s location-based technology to launch Pets911, a resource for lost and found pets and local shelter adoptions.

14. In 2002, Earth911 partnered with Oceana to launch Beaches911, which provided real-time water quality information for local beaches. With the tagline “Know Before You Go,” Beaches911 let city and county governments inform beachgoers via the Internet whether their local beach was open on a given day.

15. In 2004, Warner started Amber Alert 911, a web portal for Arizona and seven other states to post missing child alerts that would be distributed locally in real-time. Remember Earth911 the next time you see an Amber Alert notification on your phone or a highway sign.

16. While winning over 70 awards over the years, Earth911’s most prestigious prize is likely the 2001 Stockholm Challenge Award. Unofficially known as the Nobel Prize for the IT society, it celebrates innovative IT programs.

17. Earth911’s original tagline was “Make Every Day Earth Day” to remind Americans that eco-friendliness doesn’t take a day off.

18. Earth911 had a mascot in its early days named Handy. It was a yellow hand with the Earth in its palm that showed kids how to lend a hand to help out the environment.

19. The 2006 Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth brought mainstream attention to eco-friendly living. As a result, Earth911’s new owners launched daily lifestyle content on Earth911.com and a weekly newsletter that helped the site reach a whole new audience.

20. Earth911 began syndicating both its recycling directory and articles in 2007 to platforms including Comedy Central, G4 TV, and Live Science. This also allowed companies like Castrol and Keurig to provide local recycling information directly from their websites.

21. Recognizing the impact of business waste, Earth911 launched a business-centric website in 2007 in partnership with Staples. In addition to providing a directory of locations that accept industrial waste, the site provided content such as how to start an office recycling program.

22. In 2007, Earth911 experienced “the Oprah effect.” On her Earth Day special, Oprah Winfrey mentioned Earth911 by name as a resource for recycling, and her plug sent so much traffic to the website that it temporarily crashed the servers.

23. Earth911 made its primetime TV debut in November 2007. As part of its inaugural Green Week, NBC displayed a graphic on-screen during the TV show Heroes telling people to visit Earth911 to recycle their electronics. Luckily, this time the company was prepared for the bump in traffic and no servers crashed.

24. Earth911 went international in 2008, adding recycling locations in Canada and Mexico to the recycling directory.

25. 2008 also saw the relaunch of 1-800-CLEANUP, now bilingual in English and Spanish.

26. Earth911 launched its mobile application iRecycle in 2009, which has since been downloaded over 400,000 times for Android and iOS.

27. By the late 2000s, over 200,000 websites linked to Earth911.com as a resource for local recycling.

28. The popular recycling mystery series debuted on Earth911.com in 2009, answering the question of how to recycle complicated materials that typically aren’t accepted at the curb like pizza boxes and gift cards.

29. Earth911 released its first annual report in 2010, summarizing website traffic from the previous year. The most commonly searched material for recycling in 2009 was computers.

30. In 2011, Earth911 joined The Sustainability Coalition to provide data to consumer product companies and retailers on what products are commonly recycled by curbside programs in the U.S.

31. The Federal Trade Commission revised its Green Guides in 2012, imposing penalties on companies that made claims like “Please recycle” on their packaging without being able to prove that local recycling was actually available. Luckily, Earth911 was able to pair its local recycling data with population data from the US census to provide companies with a numerical value for the percentage of Americans that could recycle over 300 different materials at the curb or via drop-off locations, a handy resource for backing up green claims.

32. In 2014, Earth911 merged with Quest Resource Management Group. Quest provides business recycling and waste management services, including automotive and grocery retailers across the U.S.

33. In 2018, Earth911 was sold to Earth Media Partners, led by Mitch Ratcliffe, and joined the podcast world with Sustainability in Your Ear, a weekly show answering recycling questions and featuring interviews with leaders in the green space.

34. The Earth911 Sustainability Awards debuted in 2019, recognizing outstanding community recycling programs, eco-friendly companies, and green nonprofits.

35. In 2023, Earth911 started the eWaste for Trees program with DonorConnection. Every device recycled via mail through the program would result in the planting of 20 new trees.

Here’s to 35 more years of Earth911 being the go-to resource for low-waste living.

Editor’s Note: The sustainability road has always been a rough one, as is the case with building a new approach to any human problem. We’re preparing a new search experience, with new services that address the entire circular economy needed to keep materials in use and out of landfills. Stay tuned for the next generation of our work.