Why It Matters: Teton Valley Community Recycling

The Tin Cup Challenge is not only the single biggest philanthropic event in Teton Valley, a chance to support your favorite local nonprofits with a significant match, but also a fantastic gathering bringing together so many different people in our community to celebrate, connect, learn, and support the good work being done by all.

For Teton Valley Community Recycling (TVCR), donations through the Tin Cup Challenge provides 65% of our annual operating budget. It also gives us a great opportunity to collaborate with the Community Foundation of Teton Valley and other organizations to showcase waste reduction measures that can be taken at big events. 

Last year, working with TVCR, Full Circle Education, and RAD Curbside, the Community Foundation was able to drastically reduce the amount of waste produced at the Tin Cup Challenge. Strategic food purchasing choices by teh Foundation’s Food Aquisition Captain, Kathy Hoffman, included local donuts, bulk Tram Bar bites, and fresh fruit – delicious finger food that people really enjoyed – required no disposable plastic and resulted in almost zero food waste. Paper plates and napkins were composted at the Alta School garden during a Full Circle Education workshop teaching people that paper products make an excellent source of carbon to balance out the nitrogen from weeds and food scraps in a home compost. How amazing that hundreds of people can celebrate for hours, eat breakfast, run a race, and only produce four full trash cans! 

TVCR always leads the Tin Cup “Green Team” working to help people properly sort their waste and keep the venue clean. Look for TVCR volunteers this year and say thanks. They are also happy to answer any of your questions about recycling or share ideas on how to produce less waste in your home or workplace. The Tin Cup provides us an opportunity to connect with people who may not know much about diverting waste, reducing, reusing, and local recycling opportunities.

This year Teton County, Idaho reached a 34% waste diversion rate – equal to the national average and well above the rest of Idaho. Thanks to a community that cares about recycling and diverting waste, our county continues to have a successful (although much less profitable) recycling program while materials markets are at historic lows and national contamination rates are high. 

Together, we can continue working to keep recycling viable for Teton County, and reducing our landfill liability. By sorting our waste, we can all keep thing out of the landfill that don’t belong there, including traditional recyclables, food scraps (compost!), hazardous waste (bring to Jackson & get reimbursed by our county), and batteries (drop off at any of our convenient sites in town including Broulim’s, ACE, and Valley Lumber.) We even sponsor a program to recycling “hard to recycle waste” called TerraCycle. Check out our website (tetonrecycling.org) for more information about all of our great waste reduction programs and get more information about Recycling in Teton County. Please contact us if you’d like to get involved at tetonrecycling@gmail.com  or call 208.557.1193.

Thank you for your support!