Placer County has long been a leader in promoting sustainable community practices, striving for environmental protections, supporting economic vibrancy, and helping ensure a high quality of life for its residents and visitors.

In that spirit, Placer County staff are exploring ordinances from neighboring jurisdictions, such as the Town of Truckee and the City of South Lake Tahoe’s bans on single use plastics to consider similar regulations in eastern Placer County. This includes:

• A potential plastic bottle and paper carton ban for water containers under one gallon
• Restrictions around plastic and polystyrene single use food ware items such as polystyrene (Styrofoam) to-go boxes and plastic utensils

With Lake Tahoe's beaches, streams and forests, reducing litter and plastic/polystyrene waste would help protect the natural environment.

In 2024 alone, 52 tons of plastic beverage containers, or, 104,000 lbs were recycled in the North Lake Tahoe region. This equates to approximately 5 million single use plastic beverage containers that were recycled at the Eastern Regional Landfill.

The Town of Truckee reports that single use foodware packaging comprises 68% of litter found in Truckee, and the City of South Lake Tahoe franchise waste hauler (South Tahoe Refuse) reports that an average of 209,372 pounds of plastic bottles are collected a year, with single-use water bottles making up a significant share of the bottles collected.

Beyond the environmental damage, single-use plastics can affect your health. A study by UC Davis TERC discovered a single-use water bottle contains ~325 plastic particles per liter whereas Tahoe Tap contains ~0.044 plastic particles per liter – thousands of times cleaner.

The county is considering several various stewardship initiatives, including parking management, dark sky lighting regulations, waste reduction efforts with Clean Tahoe, the bear bin compliance program, electric vehicle charging stations and a potential shared mobility or bike share program.