SAN DIEGO — San Diego County is receiving about $4 million in ‘Beverage Container Redemption Innovation Grants,’ by CalRecycle to help start 20 recycling sites in either mobile recycling or reverse vending machines at select Smart and Final stores.
“So reverse vending machines look a lot like regular vending machines except the difference is that you'll put your bottles or cans into the vending machine and then you’ll get nickels or dimes back,” CalRecycle Director Zoe Heller said.
Heller told CBS 8 that one of the proposals is from Smart and Final, the grocery store retailer plans to add reverse vending machines to eleven stores in the San Diego area.
“It's an added level of convenience that you can kind of do your shopping for the week and also bring your empties but you can get those nickels and dimes back,” Heller said.
CBS 8 spoke to Surfrider Foundation’s Policy Manager for San Diego County Mitch Silverstein about the increase in recycling sites.
“It's a step in the right direction but it's not going to make a huge difference,” Silverstein said.
Although it's a step in the right direction, Mitch said the focus should be on source reduction of single-use plastic first.
“We need to focus on making less of it above everything else. You know, right now less than 10 percent of plastics are recycled and those numbers aren't gonna go up with a few reverse vending machines,” Silverstein said.
To learn more information about new recycling sites in our state visit calrecycle.ca.gov
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