Steve Boksanski
Executive Director – Massachusetts Beverage Association
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is incredibly beautiful, thanks in part to the efforts of its residents.
Bay Staters know the importance of recycling and do it well. But more can be done to make recycling even more effective and efficient, including modernizing outdated recycling infrastructure that makes recycling more difficult than it should be.
At the Massachusetts Beverage Association we are working to find new ways to improve access to recycling and help keep valuable, recyclable materials out of our environment where they don’t belong.
As an industry, we’re taking action to reduce our use of new plastic by carefully designing our plastic bottles and cans to be 100% recyclable. We’re also investing in communities to bring modernized, more efficient recycling programs to residents.
With that in mind, we’re excited to announce a partnership with leaders in Danvers for an investment to upgrade the town’s recycling infrastructure. In total, the near million-dollar investment is being made through Every Bottle Back, a first-of-its-kind partnership by America’s leading beverage companies – The Coca-Cola Company, Keurig Dr Pepper, PepsiCo and Polar Beverages – along with matching funds to help make recycling work better through investments and innovation.
The Every Bottle Back investment in Danvers will provide 95-gallon recycling carts to residents and help to increase the collection of recyclable materials. Alongside this new recycling infrastructure, the town is also adjusting the frequency of recycling collection from weekly to every-other-week and introducing a robust education and outreach campaign to raise awareness of this change and promote proper recycling.
The best part is that the recycling carts are being provided entirely free of charge for all eligible households. That means roughly 7,700 households will soon have these upgraded carts, which are projected to help to collect more than 6.7 million pounds of new recyclables over the next 10 years, including more than 87,000 pounds of aluminum and 262,000 pounds of PET, the highly valuable, lightweight and fully recyclable plastic from which our bottles are made.
Danvers is the third community in Massachusetts to receive funding through Every Bottle Back. Just last year, the Town of Falmouth and the City of Methuen received more than $575,000 for new recycling carts.
These collective investments show the power of public-private partnerships to bring about change and are a promising sign for a future with a cohesive, modernized approach to recycling collection.
Around the nation Every Bottle Back investments are having a real impact. Since the start of Every Bottle Back, the beverage industry has committed to investing more than $23.7 million in community recycling projects across the country.
These investments are projected to collect more than 754 million additional pounds of PET over the next 10 years and create a better recycling system that helps to ensure a bottle recycled, is a bottle that can be remade.
It is our hope that through these community investments, we can make a difference that extends throughout Massachusetts and beyond. Improving recycling infrastructure and ensuring every household has the ability to recycle is the mandatory first step.
We are optimistic that Danvers can serve as the latest example of how we can work to achieve positive outcomes for a circular economy. ◊