FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 28, 2021

MEDIA CONTACTS

Tanisha Jumper, Media and Communications, tjumper@cityoftacoma.org, (253) 591-5152

Stacy Ellifritt, Media and Communications, stacy.ellifritt@cityoftacoma.org, (253) 591-2005

Solid Waste Management Receives Grant to Expand and Promote Multifamily Recycling Program

The City of Tacoma’s Solid Waste Management has been awarded a $200,000 grant from The Recycling Partnership. This grant will be used to expand the City’s multifamily recycling program through improved recycling education, language access, and targeted outreach services to multifamily properties.

Tacoma was one of 11 cities awarded a Leadership Grant by The Recycling Partnership as a follow up to its inaugural Leadership Summit: 50 Cities Driving the Circular Economy. This summit brought together solid waste leaders and decision-makers from 50 of the largest cities geographically dispersed throughout the continental United States for the two-day summit, which sought to drive recycling systems change across the country.

“We are incredibly grateful to collaborate with The Recycling Partnership. With these grant dollars, we can fund focus groups that will help us adapt and grow our current program to be accountable to the needs of our diverse community,” said Waste Reduction Project Specialist Sam Lake.

This project will utilize focus groups to determine opportunities for improved engagement with property managers, residents, and the operations team to increase communication across all aspects of the program. Staff will also conduct five focus groups in Spanish, Korean, Khmer, Russian and Vietnamese in order to determine opportunities for improved multilingual outreach and to help develop materials in multiple languages. With the information provided by focus groups, the City will adapt and expand a multifamily recycling toolkit for a multilingual audience.

For information on Tacoma’s multifamily recycling program, visit tacomarecycles.org or contact Waste Reduction Specialist Sam Lake at slake@cityoftacoma.org, or call (253) 594-7869.

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