The City of Renton has joined the Washington State Department of Ecology and The Recycling Partnership to help residents improve their recycling habits. In March, the City of Renton will launch a 鈥淔eet on the Street鈥� recycling cart tagging project to improve the quality of recycling in single-stream curbside recycling bins. The initiative will provide personalized and real-time curbside recycling education and feedback to over 9,000 households. This new project builds on the city鈥檚 2022 anti-contamination pilot project that involved over 2,000 households.
鈥淲e鈥檙e excited to partner with the Department of Ecology and The Recycling Partnership,鈥� said John MacGillivray, Sustainability Specialist with the City of Renton. 鈥淩enton residents love to recycle and their help with this project will help us keep our curbside recycling program affordable and sustainable.鈥�
The campaign, spearheaded by the city鈥檚 Public Works Department鈥檚 Sustainability and Solid Waste Division is funded by the Washington State Department of Ecology with support from national nonprofit The Recycling Partnership. They aim is to promote better recycling practices while decreasing the amount of contaminated materials such as recyclables in plastic bags, plastic bags/wrap, and trash often found in recycling carts.
鈥淲ashingtonians are passionate about recycling, but that passion can sometimes result in non-recyclables being placed in the blue bin,鈥� said Dan Weston, Statewide Recycling Coordinator with the Department of Ecology. 鈥淲e are excited about the opportunity to provide personalized feedback to residents on how to Recycle Right.鈥�
The 鈥淔eet on the Street鈥� program, developed by The Recycling Partnership, helps communities achieve economically efficient recycling programs, reduce the number of new resources used in packaging by providing more recycled content for new products, and improve the cleanliness of communities across the country. Included in the 鈥淔eet on the Street鈥� program is an education and outreach strategy that involves a team of trained community-based observers visiting each resident鈥檚 recycling cart to provide feedback through an educational cart tag if contaminants are found.
Renton is joined by the City of Olympia and parts of Clallam County including Sequim, who were all awarded the opportunity to implement contamination reduction projects this year. The funding is part of the Department of Ecology鈥檚 strategy to improve the quality of recyclable materials through its Recycle Right campaign. The Recycle Right campaign was created in 2019 in response to the loss of end markets for some of Washington鈥檚 recyclable materials due to excessive contamination. Previous iterations of the campaign featured advertisements that encouraged residents to not bag their recyclables and to keep their recyclables empty, clean, and dry.