Celebrating Earth Day and Our New Baler
On Wednesday, April 22, 2026, Sedona Recycles celebrated Earth Day with a ribbon-cutting ceremony honoring the installation of our new baler.
It was a special opportunity to open our doors, bring our community together, and celebrate both an important milestone for Sedona Recycles and the people who made it possible.
Guests joined us throughout the afternoon for facility tours, local sustainability vendors, refreshments from ChocolaTree, fundraising activities, and a formal ribbon cutting with the Sedona Chamber of Commerce.
But perhaps the most meaningful part of the day was having all three founders of Sedona Recycles — Kate Blevins, Sandy Moriarty, and Rayna Griffin – together at the facility for the first time in many years.
More Than 30 Years of Recycling in Sedona
Sedona Recycles has been serving this community since 1989.
Over more than three decades, our organization has grown and changed, but our mission has remained the same: to demonstrate responsible resource recovery through community participation.
Having Kate, Sandy, and Rayna together on Earth Day was a wonderful reminder of just how far that original vision has come.
Today, Sedona Recycles is Northern Arizona’s only full-scale nonprofit recycling center, diverting hundreds of tons of material from the landfill every year. None of that would be possible without the community that has supported this organization from the beginning
More Than 30 Years of Recycling in Sedona
Sedona Recycles has been serving this community since 1989.
Over more than three decades, our organization has grown and changed, but our mission has remained the same: to demonstrate responsible resource recovery through community participation.
Having Kate, Sandy, and Rayna together on Earth Day was a wonderful reminder of just how far that original vision has come.
Today, Sedona Recycles is Northern Arizona’s only full-scale nonprofit recycling center, diverting hundreds of tons of material from the landfill every year. None of that would be possible without the community that has supported this organization from the beginning.
Celebrating Our New Baler
The centerpiece of the Earth Day Celebration was the official unveiling of our new baler.
If you’ve followed our journey over the past year, you know just how significant this piece of equipment is to our operation. A baler compresses recyclable materials into dense, uniform bales that can be shipped to vendors and transformed into new products. At Sedona Recycles, it is quite literally one of the machines that makes everything else we do possible.
Our previous baler had reached the end of its usable life after years of repairs, obsolete components, and increasingly difficult maintenance.
Replacing it required an investment of approximately $340,000 – a significant undertaking for a small nonprofit organization.
Rather than taking on substantial debt, Sedona Recycles made the decision to invest heavily from our financial reserves while asking our community to help us rebuild those funds. By the time of our Earth Day celebration, generous donors had already contributed approximately $180,000 toward the project and we still have a long way to go.
That generosity is something we do not take for granted.
An Earth Day Celebration With Our Community
Throughout the event, visitors were able to see the new baler in action, tour the recycling facility, meet local sustainability organizations, ask questions about recycling, and learn more about what happens to their materials after they arrive at Sedona Recycles.
The Sedona Chamber of Commerce joined us for the official ribbon cutting, while our founders, board members, staff, supporters, and community members gathered to celebrate the next chapter of Sedona Recycles.
Guests who contributed to the fundraiser also received Sedona Recycles gifts as a small thank-you for helping support the organization.
For an organization built around community participation, we could not have imagined a more fitting way to celebrate Earth Day.
Thank you, Sedona
Again and again, when Sedona Recycles has faced a moment of need, this community has stepped forward.
Our new baler represents much more than a piece of equipment. It represents the ability to continue processing the community’s recyclable materials reliably for years to come. And it represents what is possible when a community decides that keeping valuable resources out of the landfill matters.
To everyone who attended our Earth Day celebration, donated to the baler campaign, shared our fundraiser, volunteered, recycled with us, or supported Sedona Recycles in any other way: thank you.
We are incredibly grateful to have celebrated this milestone with you.
And while the ribbon has officially been cut, our fundraising work continues as we rebuild the financial reserves used to make this critical investment possible.
If you would like to support Sedona Recycles and our new baler, please consider making a donation at SedonaRecycles.org/donate.
Together, we’re keeping Sedona recycling.