Big news came out of Texas today when the American Beverage Association announced the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex as the first investment under its Every Bottle Back initiative.  As part of the initiative, $3 million will be directed to improve recycling practices in the region.

ABA’s President and CEO, Katherine Lugar told The Dallas Morning News: 

“This is going to be the very first rollout that will allow us to fulfill our mission of every bottle back… We’re going to reduce the need for new plastic, keep our bottles out of the environment and ensure that our bottles don’t end up in places they don’t belong with these investments.”

The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the first region of investment as part of our sustained, comprehensive effort to reduce the industry's use of new plastic by making significant investments to improve the collection of the industry's valuable plastic bottles so they can be made into new bottles.

Working with our partners – The Recycling Partnership and Closed Loop Partners – the Dallas-Fort Worth area was strategically selected to begin this important work as the North Texas region is an important one to our industry.  We have deep roots in these communities with distribution centers and manufacturing and production facilities that provide high-paying, family-supporting jobs. And we have an obligation to do our part the make the communities we serve stronger.

This region provides a unique opportunity for our industry to do just that by making a demonstrable difference in the local recycling system through improvements and resident education and outreach.  Through this effort, we will foster and grow the circular economy by making investments in the Balcones Resources Municipal Recycling Facility (MRF) to process all recyclable materials, including our plastic bottles. And with a new multifamily recycling ordinance having gone into effect this month, we will expand recycling access and education to 50,000 residents in the Dallas Metroplex. In Fort Worth, we will support the city in its efforts to educate 232,000 residents on recycling best practices to reduce recycling contamination. Education efforts also will include supporting the North Texas COG expand its "Know What to Throw" campaign across 230 communities beyond Dallas and Fort Worth.

We are thrilled to announce our first region of investment and are confident these investments will put us on a path to further capture more plastic bottles, resulting in a lesser need for new plastic by our industry.

Learn more about the Every Bottle Back initiative at www.EveryBottleBack.org.