Alin Beane takes us to the Lake Tahoe Litter Summit.
Nothing quite beats the beauty of Lake Tahoe, and Wednesday's Lake Tahoe Litter Summit brought 50 of local leaders together at the Thunderbird Lodge to discuss ways to keep it that way.
Agencies in attendance ranged from local, state, and federal organizations to local non-profits and businesses.
"We're underneath the surface of Lake Tahoe, cleaning up litter from out from the lakebed itself. but at the end of the day, what we want to do is work on preventing it from getting out in the first place,” says Colin West, founder and CEO of local non-profit Clean up the Lake.
Clean up the Lake previously cleared 25,281 pounds of litter underwater around the 72-mile circumference of Lake Tahoe. Based on that recovery, they estimate about 42,844 pounds of trash and 19,292 unique items will be removed from its second deep clean of the lake. That cleanup began in December and is ongoing.
The Summit began with two separate panel discussions.
“One to address single use plastics policy and legislation that goes against litter being created in the environment around Tahoe,” West says.
The City of South Lake Tahoe and the Town of Truckee have both adopted bans on single use bottles of water. Similar legislation was proposed for eastern Placer County, but the Board of Supervisors voted against it.
Trash at Tahoe is inevitable, so the other panel highlighted ways to improve waste management.
“Garbage cans, recycling bins, dumpsters and things around the basin to see, do we have enough of that?” asks West.
Some dumpsters around the lake are marked as "anything and everything." But many don't realize recycling can go in there too. This has led to people leaving plastic and other recyclables outside of proper bins, for animals like bears to root through.
One of the topics during that panel is a recurring issue seen around the lake over holiday weekends -- people leaving trash, assuming there's someone to pick it up for them.
Gavin Feiger with Keep Tahoe Blue was one of the 50 representatives in attendance.
“There are not people here paid to clean up your trash,” Feiger says. “Sometimes there’s seasonal employees Keep Tahoe Blue, we have thousands of volunteers that go in every year, but none of this is free."
Moving forward, organizers ask the community to remain litter conscious as they explore the Tahoe Basin and donate their time and money to local non-profits where possible.
The community discussed the trash problems around Lake Tahoe
