Patricia Farrell Franklin -- a well-known person in the recycling industry -- passed away October 14, 2012 at Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, West Virginia. She was critically injured the day before when struck by a pickup truck while crossing an intersection in Oakland, Maryland.
Although Pat retired as Executive Director of the Container Recycling Institute (CRI) in 2007, her work lives on in the passage of a bottle bill in Hawaii and in bottle bill expansions in Connecticut, New York, and Oregon.
Pat was born May 11, 1941 in Washington, DC where she grew up, graduating from Falls Church (VA) High School in 1959 and William and Mary College in 1963. She is survived by her husband of 48 years, Jay D. Franklin, children, Kimberly (Steve) Trundle of Falls Church, and Devin (Michelle Apland) Franklin, Lebanon, NY. Her first child, Dennis Franklin, passed away in 2008. She had four grandchildren: Claire, Scott and Wyatt Trundle, and Cedar Franklin.
In addition to being a schoolteacher while her children were young, Pat was active in northern VA politics and community matters, including the League of Women Voters. Drawing on her passion as a civic activist, from her basement in 1991 founded the Container Recycling Institute (CRI), a non-profit organization that supports beverage-container deposit laws and recycling programs.
Pat worked tirelessly to grow CRI from a shoestring operation to an internationally-recognized source of original information and analysis on beverage-container recycling in the United States and Canada. She spearheaded a series of Bottle Bill Summits, spoke at scores of recycling conferences, and gave hundred of media interviews. Pat was instrumental in getting then-Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont to sponsor a National Bottle Bill initiative, testifying before the Committee on the Environment and Public Works on Capitol Hill. She wrote important policy papers and founded two significant recycling websites.
A month before her death, Pat was the oldest participant the 2012 SavageMan Triathlon at Deep Creek Lake State Park. Riding the 40k bicycle segment, she finished eleven minutes faster than she did in 2011.
Contributions in Pat Franklin’s memory may be made to either the Flying Deer Nature Center, http://flyingdeernaturecenter.org/contact.html, the Joanna M. Nicolay Melanoma Foundation, Oakland, MD, http://www.melanomaresource.org/index.php/site/content/donatetothefoundation/ or to the Container Recycling Institute, Culver City, CA, http://www.container-recycling.org/