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, the Tahoe County Executive Office has been exploring a host of destination and community stewardship initiatives that seek to protect the natural environment, support local businesses, increase economic activity, expand regional transportation options, and engage the local community in a “bottom up” approach to program development.

Placer County staff have been exploring neighboring jurisdiction ordinances such as the Town of Truckee and the City of South Lake Tahoe’s bans on single use plastics to consider a similar ban. This includes:

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

These neighboring jurisdictions’ ordinances also include bans on the sale and distribution of polystyrene (Styrofoam), something the county is also considering.

With Tahoe’s lake, beaches, streams and forests, helping reduce litter and plastic/polystyrene waste would help protect the natural environment, while providing consumers and businesses.

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.