Lafayette, LA – Lafayette Consolidated Government (LCG) and The Recycling Partnership are working together to reduce waste and improve curbside recycling in the city of Lafayette. The “Feet on the Street” campaign will educate residents on the importance of recycling correctly and what should and should not be placed in recycling carts.
Starting Monday, November 16 through Friday, December 11, educational stickers will be placed on carts showing which items belong in carts and those that don’t. In order for the sticker to be applied, residents are asked to put their carts at the road on their waste collection day.
When the wrong items are placed in recycling carts, many of these materials not only contaminate truckloads, meaning that they end up in the landfill instead of being recycled, but they also add to the cost of recycling as they must be sorted and hauled off for alternative disposal methods. Furthermore, these items can cause equipment jams at recycling processing facilities, creating hazards for workers.
Mayor-President Josh Guillory said, “Recycling properly not only maximizes the life of the landfill, but it also gives our citizens the ability to participate directly in driving a local recycling economy and managing our resources more wisely.”
“Feet on the Street” is made possible by a grant from The Recycling Partnership with funding, in part, from the Coca Cola Company. The Recycling Partnership’s Director of Community Programs Chris Coady added, “We are helping Lafayette capture more quality recyclables that are then transformed into new materials, building a more resilient recycling system that is critical to combatting climate change, creating jobs, and protecting our planet.”
Coca-Cola Bottling Company UNITED West Region Vice President Susanne Hall believes supporting proven, effective recycling programs is a win for everyone. “At Coca-Cola, our packaging has more than one life thanks to recycling. We are looking forward to seeing the benefits of the ‘Feet on the Street’ program in Lafayette.”
LCG is working hard to ensure curbside recycling will be the best that it can be, and with residents’ help, keeping the recycling stream clean can save taxpayers money, reduce the number of new resources expended in creating packaging products, and improve the health of our community.
Recycling the Right Way
- Place ONLY Flattened Cardboard, Paper, Metal Cans, and Plastic Bottles and Jugs in your bin.
- Items should be free of food residue.
- Clean – rinse cans, plastic bottles and jugs, shake off the water
- Dry – Items should be dry before placing them inside a recycling cart.
- Do not bag recycling. Only place loose items in a recycling cart.
- When in doubt, throw it out.
Learn more about what is and is not acceptable to recycle in Lafayette at www.old.lafayettela.gov/recycling
For more information and interviews about the “Feet on the Street Campaign,” contact Environmental Quality Manager Bess Foret at 337-291-5676.
About The Recycling Partnership
The Recycling Partnership is a national nonprofit organization that leverages corporate partner funding to transform recycling for good in states, cities, and communities nationwide. As the leading organization in the country that engages the full recycling supply chain from the corporations that manufacture products and packaging to local governments charged with recycling to industry end markets, haulers, material recovery facilities, and converters, The Recycling Partnership positively impacts recycling at every step in the process. Since 2014, the nonprofit change agent diverted 230 million pounds of new recyclables from landfills, saved 465 million gallons of water, avoided more than 250,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases, and drove significant reductions in targeted contamination rates. Learn more at recyclingpartnership.org.