The Garden partners with the St. Louis-Jefferson Solid Waste Management District to promote Reducing-Reusing-Recycling and Composting in all our facilities and around our community. Our local district serves constituents in the City of St. Louis and St. Louis, Jefferson and St. Charles Counties.
Since starting up in 1993 as part of a statewide network, the District annually awards grants to non-profits, recycling-related businesses, and local governments to support waste minimization efforts. This funding leverages creation and retention of thousands of jobs and associated regional economic benefits, and yields environmental benefits including energy efficiency, pollution prevention, conservation of water and other resources and climate change mitigation.
Recent successes include widespread adoption of “single stream” recycling collection, and expansion of large-scale composting systems to add food-waste processing to ongoing regional yard waste management. Priority issues being addressed include establishing permanent regional collection facilities for Household Hazardous Waste and increasing recycling participation overall.