American Beverage announced LaSalle, IL, has been selected to receive an investment of $55,500 from the beverage industry to improve the community’s curbside recycling system. This investment, combined with $4.5 million in city matching funds, will provide 3,700 households in LaSalle with free, 96-gallon recycling carts. The recycling cart investment is being made as part of the Every Bottle Back initiative, a beverage industry-led effort to reduce the industry’s plastic footprint, in collaboration with The Recycling Partnership (TRP) and the Illinois Beverage Association (IBA).
“American Beverage is excited to be supportive of an upgrade to LaSalle’s recycling infrastructure through the Every Bottle Back initiative,” said Katherine Lugar, president and chief executive officer of American Beverage. “By providing residents with new high-capacity carts we hope to increase recycling rates and modernize the community’s collection system. The beverage industry is committed to reducing our plastic footprint and this investment will be instrumental in helping do just that.”
“The Illinois Beverage Association works every day to be leaders in environmental sustainability and to develop solutions that will help us get more of our 100% recyclable bottles back so they can be remade, as intended,” said Illinois Beverage Association Executive Director Rob Nash. “This meaningful investment from the beverage industry will have a long-lasting, positive impact on LaSalle, its residents and their future. We are thankful for American Beverage and our industry partners for recognizing this need and taking action to deliver.”
“The Partnership has been thrilled to work with the City of LaSalle to provide recycling carts to every residence,” says Keysha Burton, Director of Infrastructure Programs at The Recycling Partnership. “It means equitable access to recycling and increases capacity to collect more cardboard and paper, glass, plastics, and aluminum in the community.”
This unique partnership will benefit more than 9,300 LaSalle residents and, over the next decade, is expected to bring nearly 6.5 million new pounds of recyclable materials into the collection stream, including more than 252,000 pounds of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic – the most recyclable plastic in the country that is used for the beverage industry’s bottles – and more than 84,000 pounds of aluminum. LaSalle is the latest in more than two dozen initial projects that the beverage industry has committed to funding under Every Bottle Back. To date, all Every Bottle Back investments total more than $20 million in committed funding and are estimated to yield more than 726 million more pounds of PET over 10 years.