The City of Pittsburgh announces that it received a $500,000 grant offer from the Recycling Partnership, a national nonprofit organization that leverages corporate partner funding to improve recycling in communities across America. The funding is part of an agreement to match the city’s 2020 Capital Budget proposal for a three-year program to purchase and deploy recycling containers city-wide.
The plan would benefit the 115,630 Pittsburgh residences who have their waste and recycling collected by the Bureau of Environmental Services. The agreement to increase the number of free, re-useable blue bins would help eliminate the need for the blue garbage bags residents often use to pack their plastic, metal, glass, paper, and cardboard recycling. As reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and WESA, the bags have been shown to impede the recycling process, including clogging the machinery at the Material Recovery Facility run by Recycle Source in Hazelwood.
“[The Recycling Partnership] is excited to respond to Mayor Peduto’s plan to help Pittsburgh transition away from a bag-based recycling program into a containerized one by offering to match the Mayor’s proposed investment dollar for dollar,” says Rob Taylor, director of grants and community development at the Recycling Partnership, in a press release. “By putting this grant funding on the table, The Recycling Partnership will boost the city’s ability to transition away from bags and move towards a more efficient and effective recycling program.”