organized Canada’s first multi-material curbside pickup of recyclable material for 80,000 households of The Beaches neighbourhood of east Toronto. In 1977, Jack McGinnis and Derek Stephenson created a private consulting company, Resource Integration Systems (RIS) to advise governments in the field of recycling and waste management. That same year, in response to the 1973 energy crisis, Rick Findlay was hired by Environment Canada’s Federal Facilities Program to develop and coordinate a resource conservation program primarily for federal government facilities in Ontario. The program was expected to improve environmental quality and reduce energy demand. The Federal Facilities Program sought advice on a recycling pilot program for Canadian Forces Base Borden and eventually made contact with RIS. RIS experimented with a variety of techniques to improve the performance recycling and found that participation rates were significantly higher when residents could simply drop their recycling in a plastic box. Initially, the project at CFB Borden used milk crates borrowed from a local grocery store. Participation was likely encouraged by a standing order from the Base Commander to recycle. Meanwhile, a student and a volunteer at a Kitchener/Waterloo, Ontario office of Pollution Probe, Eric Hellman organized "Garbage Fest 77" in Kitchener to raise awareness about the consequences of garbage production. McGinnis was invited to speak about his experiences with the CFB Borden program. Hellman also requested a representative from Superior Sanitation (later to be Laidlaw Waste Systems Ltd), the local garbage collection contractor, and an employee named Nyle Ludolph attended Garbage Fest. After meeting McGinnis at the festival, Ludolph became an enthusiastic recycler at his own home and helped increase Laidlaw’s presence in recycling. Nyle managed "Total Recycling Systems", a subsidiary of Superior Sanitation/Laidlaw. In 1978, Jack McGinnis and Eric Hellman and others met in the basement of the Trinity United Church on Yonge Street in Toronto and created the Recycling Council of Ontario. Implementation In 1981, after close cooperation with Nyle Ludolph, RIS submitted a proposal to Laidlaw to collect and recycle materials at the curbside for a pilot project in Kitchener, Ontario. Lillian and Ken Croal of Kitchener were the first to use and receive a blue box. RIS designed the program, and Total Recycling had the responsibility to handle all operations. The Kitchener project included 1,500 households and was tested with four different approaches to recycling: Curbside pick-up without providing blue boxes; Curbside pick-up with blue boxes; Curbside pick-up with blue