SUMMIT COUNTY – Summit Recycling Project (SRP) is challenging locals to clean green.

The nonprofit’s Green Cleaning Challenge begins in mid-May, but SRP officials are requesting participants now, in honor of Earth Day Tuesday. Ten households and one cleaning company will be selected from applicants to participate.

SRP will provide program participants with a month’s supply of nontoxic cleaning supplies, supplied by sponsor Mountain Green, to use and rate.

“We are really looking for the “average Joe’ to participate,” said SRP education coordinator Holly Kingsley. “We want other people to be able to relate to them and say, “If they can do it, we can do it.'”

SRP created the program after seeing the high volumes of hazardous cleaning supplies, such as bleach, at the annual Household Hazardous Waste Collection Day (HHWCD).

The program was initiated after SRP staff realized that HHWCD was bringing in high volumes of hazardous cleaning supplies each year.

SRP officials realized they must increase consumer education if they are to decrease the volumes of hazardous household waster collected each year.

A request for partial sponsorship was sent to Mountain Green, a Colorado company, in February. Instead, the company offered to sponsor the entire program. “I have been amazed by their enthusiasm to be involved in this. It is so exciting to find companies that truly care,” Kingsley said.

SRP officials will add the participant feedback and tips to the organization’s Green Cleaning Guide.

The free guide should be available this fall and will contain recipes for creating one’s own green cleaning products, as well as a list of where to buy ecofriendly commercial products.

If interested in participating in the Green Cleaning Challenge, contact Summit Recycling Project with your name, contact information and thoughts and experience with cleaning green. Skeptics are welcome. Contact SRP at (970) 668-5703 or recycle@colorado.net or P.O. Box 4506, Frisco, CO 80443.