LAKE TAHOE, Calif./Nev. – Clean Up The Lake brought organizations and agencies together on Thursday, Oct. 2, for its third Litter Summit, an annual gathering that tackles litter in the Tahoe basin.

“This is a community which relishes in taking care of itself, giving back, and rallying a community to do better,” Jenny Uvira, Clean Up The Lake’s programs manager said. “If the locals aren’t going out of their way to take care of their home, who else going to want to continue on with that?”

In a representative fashion, the all-day event at the Thunderbird Lodge saw no single-use items and used recycled Sailer Jerry tins to hold silverware. Participants brought their own reusable mugs and water bottles.

“It’s really important to set that bar. This is the precedence and this is why we’re here,” Uvira said, who expressed the summit isn’t just about finding solutions or identifying challenges, but also about highlighting progress.

There were many successes to celebrate and updates to share from Clean Up The Lake, Sierra Nevada Alliance, the League to Save Lake Tahoe, and ECO Clean Solutions, who each presented.

Clean Up The Lake shared how since 2018, it has hauled 87,095 pounds out of Lake Tahoe, and other lakes worldwide, and called the public as well as regional partners to action in its mission to protect the environment.

Sierra Nevada Alliance demonstrated how its Lake Tahoe Ambassador Program has engaged the next generation of stewards with paid summer internships for ages 14-18. Through the program, the ambassadors build experience, interacting and sharing information about Tahoe’s environment with the public.

The League’s Blue Beach Program was exemplified through the significant litter reduction seen during the Fourth of July holiday at Zephyr Cove Resort and Shoals, which was once a litter hotspot that made headlines.

And ECO-CLEAN Solutions shared how its robot, now deployed at multiple Tahoe Beaches, cleans beyond the surfaces and inches below the sand.

One major collaborative success from last summit is the Litter Prevention Committee, which took shape over the last year in conjunction with the Destination Stewardship Council. The committee is charged with strategizing and implementing action items from these summits.

Summit leaders didn’t stop at sharing the successes, knowing all too well there is still work to do. The summit shared and dissected the challenges the region still faces, one of those being funding. As Clean Up The Lake founder, Colin West said, they can have all the ideas in the world, but they ultimately remain ideas without funding. On that front, the summit proposed generating new funding sources and strategic partnerships.

On the topic of funding, one conversation focused on Placer County, Truckee and Incline Village Improvement District’s available funding for water refill stations and the best way to use the funding, from refill station locations to strategies.

Another discussion centered around harnessing the SNA Ambassadors for litter mitigation, since they are already an existing resource.

And as certain single-use plastics have been banned in Truckee and South Lake Tahoe, the summit discussed facilitating ban considerations basin-wide.

Participants also identified resource gaps in litter mitigation and how to bridge that with developing contact information lists, supplies, methods and procedures.

The action items identified on each challenge topic will go on to the Litter Prevention Committee for strategic implementation in the year to come.

Not only does the summit join voices and reduce redundancy among partners, it creates opportunity for empowerment and support.

“That’s the whole point of this summit,” Uvira said, “is to bring all these organizations, the agencies, the towns, and remember that we’re all in this together.”