American Beverage has awarded a $25,000 grant to Atlanta-based nonprofit Live Thrive. This will fund new equipment that will increase the amount of materials recycled at a new facility in DeKalb County.
The funds will add a new baler to Live Thrive’s Center for Hard to Recycle Materials (CHaRM), will be an important drop-off facility for residents who do not have access to recycling services at home. The center accepts items that sometimes get landfilled rather than recycled, like mattresses and bicycles, and also accepts everyday recyclables like beverage bottles and cans to be remade into new ones.
The new investment will provide more than 300,000 households with an additional drop-off site for recyclables, giving residents confidence that the recyclables will be remade into new products as intended. The investment will also support community outreach to residents on what specific materials can be recycled at the new facility.
“We are excited to support DeKalb County’s efforts to make recycling more effective and easier for people to participate in,” said Kevin Keane, president and chief executive officer of American Beverage. “Investments like this help create a circular economy for all recyclable materials, including our bottles and cans, and modernized recycling systems will reduce the use of new plastic.”
The improved facility will collect an estimated 26 million more pounds of new recyclables, including nearly 1.5 million pounds of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic, the 100 percent recyclable plastic used for plastic beverage bottles and other products.
The new drop-off recycling center is the second CHaRM facility in the Atlanta area. It is the second investment in Georgia of the Every Bottle Back initiative, an effort by the leading members of the beverage industry — The Coca-Cola Company, Keurig Dr Pepper, and PepsiCo — to improve recycling systems and the remaking of beverage bottles and cans. Every Bottle Back has committed $39.1 million to 65 community projects nationwide. These investments are estimated to yield nearly 915 million new pounds of recycled PET and more than 87 million more pounds of recycled aluminum over the next decade.