South Tahoe, California, receives grant to help with recycling cart rollout

South Tahoe Refuse & Recycling Services in California has a $305,600 grant from American Beverage in collaboration with The Recycling Partnership through the Every Bottle Back initiative to help fund new recycling carts for 19,100 South Lake Tahoe residents and residential outreach materials.

The carts will replace resident-provided containers for more convenient and effective collection as the community rolls out curbside organics collection.

This grant supports South Tahoe Refuse, the area’s contracted material recovery facility, and the city and county in realizing their efforts to upgrade collections operations and bring improved recycling access directly to residents.

The city of South Lake Tahoe, El Dorado County and Douglas County are introducing a three-cart curbside collection program at the end of August. This new semiautomated collection program will be safer for workers and reduce the use of plastic bags, according to South Tahoe Refuse & Recycling Services.

The program is designed to comply with California’s Senate Bill 1383 (S.B. 1383), which mandates that municipalities implement comprehensive organics diversion programs and to secure organics processing capacity, while in Nevada, the three-cart program is a voluntary option.

The new carts began arriving at residents’ homes Aug. 26, with delivery starting in California and continuing through early October. 

Crews are delivering a trash cart (black body, black lid labeled "Garbage") to all accounts that do not have a bear box, a recycling cart (black body, blue lid labeled "Recycling") and yard waste cart (black body, green lid labeled "Yard Waste").

Details on what materials go into each cart are printed on the carts.

“Plastic does not belong in greenspaces and waterways, which is why we’re proud to play our part in making recycling easier and more accessible for South Lake Tahoe residents,” Kevin Keane, president and CEO of Washington-based American Beverage Association, says. “We are committed to working with local leaders to advance and prioritize pragmatic solutions that strengthen recycling and community-focused programs like the California Redemption Value system.

“Through partnerships like this, we’re working to get every bottle back so they can be remade as intended. These projects are a win-win for communities, the environment and our industry because they go much further in reducing the use of new plastic and addressing packaging concerns than bans."

The new carts will allow El Dorado County to collect an estimated 15 million pounds of new recyclables over the next decade, according to American Beverage. This includes more than 195,000 pounds of aluminum and half a million pounds of polyethylene terephthalate (PET).

This investment is part of 65 initial projects that the leading members of the beverage industry—the Coca-Cola Co., Keurig Dr Pepper and PepsiCo—and the industry’s sustainability partners have committed to fund through Every Bottle Back. To date, the beverage industry has committed $39.1 million in funding nationwide estimated to yield nearly 915 million new pounds of recycled PET and more than 87 million more pounds of recycled aluminum over the next decade.