“Feet on the Street” cart-tagging recycling project
Published on February 26, 2025
RENTON, WA (FEBRUARY 26, 2025) – 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 “Feet on the Street” 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’s 2022 anti-contamination pilot project that involved over 2,000 households.
“We’re excited to partner with the Department of Ecology and The Recycling Partnership,” said John MacGillivray, Sustainability Specialist with the City of Renton. “Renton residents love to recycle and their help with this project will help us keep our curbside recycling program affordable and sustainable.”
The campaign, spearheaded by the city’s Public Works Department’s 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. Learn more about the items accepted in Renton’s curbside recycling program at www.republicservicesrenton.com.
“Washingtonians are passionate about recycling, but that passion can sometimes result in non-recyclables being placed in the blue bin,” said Dan Weston, Statewide Recycling Coordinator with the Department of Ecology. “We are excited about the opportunity to provide personalized feedback to residents on how to Recycle Right.”
The “Feet on the Street” 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 “Feet on the Street” program is an education and outreach strategy that involves a team of trained community-based observers visiting each resident’s 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’s 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’s 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.
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About City of Renton
The City of Renton, Washington, with a population of 108,800 (2024), is located on the southeast shore of Lake Washington, just south of Seattle. Renton's strong economic base, diverse marketplace, and favorable business climate have attracted nationally recognized companies wishing to provide employees and their families with an outstanding quality of life. Renton is the home of Boeing, PACCAR, IKEA, Super Bowl Champion (2014) Seattle Seahawks, two-time (2016 & 2019) MLS champion and CONCACAF Champion (2022) Seattle Sounders FC (in 2024), and the eternal resting place of rock icon Jimi Hendrix. You can find more information on our website, news releases, Facebook, Twitter, and Nextdoor pages.
About Washington State Department of Ecology
The Department of Ecology employs about 1,700 people located in six major offices and a number of smaller offices throughout the State. The mission of the agency is to protect, preserve, and enhance Washington’s environment, and promote the wise management of air, land, and water for the benefit of current and future generations. The agency is organized into ten environmental programs plus one administrative program with six divisions. The Solid Waste Management program coordinates solid waste and recycling programs in Washington. The program's mission is to reduce wastes through prevention and reuse; keep toxics out of the environment; and safely manage what remains.
About The Recycling Partnership
At The Recycling Partnership, we are solving for circularity. We mobilize people, data, and solutions across the value chain to unlock the environmental and economic benefits of recycling and a circular economy. We work on the ground with thousands of communities to transform underperforming recycling programs and tackle circular economy challenges. We work with companies to make their packaging more circular and help them meet their climate and sustainability goals. And we work with government to develop the policy solutions that will address the systemic needs of our residential recycling system. Since 2014, the nonprofit change agent diverted 500 million pounds of new recyclables from landfills, saved 968 million gallons of water, avoided more than 500,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases, and drove significant reductions in targeted contamination rates. Learn more at recyclingpartnership.org.