Recognizing the people and organizations keeping reusable materials out of landfills — one community at a time.
Presented by Loopway on Earth Day, April 22.
About the Loopway Local Award
The Loopway Local Award is presented on Earth Day to an individual whose work has measurably diverted reusable materials from landfills — and who got there by working with others.
That second half matters as much as the first. The award is built around UN Sustainable Development Goal 17, Partnership for the Goals: no single person, business, club, or congregation solves this alone. We’re looking for the person who brings those groups to the same table.
The emphasis is on local. Loopway’s directory spans all 50 states, but nearly every entry in it started the same way: someone in one community built something that worked, and then someone in the next community copied it. This award recognizes that work at the level where it actually happens — a neighborhood, a congregation, a school, a city — and holds it up as a model others can follow.
2026 was the first year the Loopway Local Award was given. It is awarded when someone’s work clears the bar below — not automatically every year. The next award will be presented on Earth Day, April 22, 2027. Location to be announced.
What we look for:
- Real diversion. Material actually kept out of a landfill, at meaningful volume — not pledges, plans, or awareness campaigns.
- Partnership (UN SDG 17). Work done with others — civic groups, congregations, schools, businesses, agencies. We look for the convener: the person who gets organizations that don’t normally work together pulling in the same direction.
- Repeatability. A model another community could adopt without special circumstances, unusual funding, or a single irreplaceable person.
- Access. Free or low-barrier participation for the public.
- Durability. A sustained effort, not a one-time event.
2026 Recipient — The 1st Annual Loopway Local Award
Andrew Siegel
Owner, The Junkluggers of Greater Dallas · Dallas, Texas
Announced at The Environmental Xperience at EarthX, Hilton Anatole, Dallas, Texas — April 22, 2026.
Why The Junkluggers
The Junkluggers of Greater Dallas is an eco-friendly furniture and junk removal franchise dedicated to landfill diversion, owned by Andrew Siegel. A core principle of the company is built around a simple rule: donate and recycle first, landfill last.
Over several years, Siegel’s team has taken that principle beyond its own trucks and into the community, hosting free E-Waste Events — pop-up electronics recycling drives run in partnership with neighborhood associations, schools, congregations, and civic groups across North Texas. The events cost participating organizations nothing and cost residents nothing.
Partnership as a practice. What sets Siegel apart isn’t the trucks — it’s who he gets in the room. He has brought EarthX, Rotary clubs, churches, schools, and neighborhood groups around a single simple idea, and kept them coming back year after year. That is UN Sustainable Development Goal 17 — Partnership for the Goals — not as a slogan on a slide, but as a standing practice.
He does it where he lives. These are the neighborhoods Siegel works in and the neighborhoods he comes home to, and the events reflect it. He has even recruited his own sons to work alongside the crew on collection days — which is, in miniature, the whole point of the award: this work spreads person to person, in the places people actually live.
Real diverted volume, delivered through partnership, in a format any community could copy. That combination is exactly what the Loopway Local Award was created to recognize.
How the program works
The Junkluggers of Greater Dallas and the Rotary Club of Preston Hollow have worked together to create a process that is smooth, seamless, and easily replicated.
Each event brings in a third party — a church, school, community center, or similar partner organization. That isn’t incidental. The partner is what carries the message past the Rotary membership and into the surrounding neighborhood, and it’s why these events reach people who would never see a Rotary announcement.
The division of labor:
- The partner organization provides the site and helps spread the word to its own community.
- The Rotary Club of Preston Hollow handles outreach, promotion, and volunteers.
- The Junkluggers of Greater Dallas handles everything else — sorting, hauling, and certified recycling, at no cost to the host.
Community members drop off unwanted electronics — computers, monitors, phones, power cords, gaming systems, and more — at a single collection site. Certificates of hard-drive destruction are available on request for any computers collected.
An ongoing partnership
This isn’t a single event. It’s a working relationship going back to 2023.
The two organizations first connected at an EarthX reception in August 2023, where Andrew Siegel was introduced to the Rotary Club of Preston Hollow. The first joint collection event followed within months.
Since then the two have run free e-waste collection events together on a recurring basis, hosted at schools and congregations across North Texas — each one with a local partner organization bringing in its own community.
Alongside the collection events, the partnership has maintained a presence at EarthX every year since 2023 — presentations in 2024 and 2025, and a booth at Earthx2026 — culminating in the announcement of this award on the closing day of Earthx2026 at the Hilton Anatole.
“In the spirit of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 17 — Partnerships for the Goals — this event brings together Rotary Clubs, organizations like EarthX, businesses like JUNKluggers, and places of worship. No single entity can solve our environmental challenges alone, but by working together, we can create lasting solutions and drive real impact. Collaboration isn’t just an option — it’s the key to a sustainable future.”
Steven Bender, Global Project Ambassador, United Nations Association-OC
Want to replicate this in your community?
Contact The Junkluggers of Greater Dallas. They partner with HOAs, schools, congregations, and nonprofits to host free e-waste collection events — the local Rotary club and partner organization handle the marketing, and Junkluggers handles the rest.
See their E-Waste Events program page →
Outside Dallas? Check our categories page → for e-waste recycling options nationwide.
“Our efforts to date have been great, but we are just scratching the surface. Imagine the impact we could have across every large congregation, school, and campus in this city. The list is endless.”
Andrew Siegel
Nominate for the 2027 Loopway Local Award
Know someone keeping reusable materials out of landfills in your community? We’re accepting nominations for the next Loopway Local Award, to be presented on Earth Day, April 22, 2027. Location to be announced.
Send us their name, the organizations they’ve brought together, and why they meet the criteria above.