Texas sent 41.3 million tons of municipal waste to landfills in its most recent fiscal year and recovered only about 2 million tons for recycling or reuse — roughly one ton diverted for every 20 buried — according to the state’s latest waste accounting, even as volunteers keep pulling tons of bottles and cans from Texas rivers and beaches.
The figures come from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s annual “Year in Review” report, published ever year covering the fiscal year that ended Aug. 31, 2024. Across the 206 active landfills analyzed, Texans disposed of 41,321,494 tons of municipal solid waste and diverted 2,029,205 tons for recycling or reuse, the agency reported. The state buried 7.24 pounds of waste per person each day.
Texas counts construction debris and treatment-plant sludge as municipal waste, a broader definition than the federal one, so the diversion figure is not a pure measure of household recycling. The state landfills the overwhelming majority of what it discards, including the glass, aluminum and plastic that carry resale value on commodity markets. The report estimated about 50 years of remaining landfill capacity statewide.
Much of the discarded packaging never reaches a landfill at all — it lands in waterways. On March 21, more than 1,500 volunteers spread across 24 sites for the 31st annual Basura Bash, the largest single-day river cleanup in the state, and hauled 65,334 pounds — nearly 33 tons — of trash from creeks and rivers across the San Antonio River Watershed, according to the San Antonio River Authority. Over three decades the event has removed close to 2 million pounds of debris, much of it beverage containers and other packaging.
Texas has no refundable deposit on beverage containers. In the 10 states that do, returns dwarf what Texas recovers. Oregon, which refunds 10 cents a container, posted an 87% redemption rate in 2024, the highest in the nation, with more than 2 billion containers returned.
Michigan, where the deposit is also a dime, took back 70.4% of its containers even after a recent decline. Deposit states routinely recover most of their bottles and cans; states without a deposit recover only a fraction.
The legislature convenes in January 2027. Last session, a bipartisan Beverage Container Recycling Refund bill cleared a House committee unanimously but failed to get a final vote before the session expired, and supporters say they will refile.
Until then, the next large cleanup is the General Land Office’s Fall Coastwide Cleanup on Sept. 19, when thousands of volunteers will again comb the coast for the bottles and cans that the state’s landfills — and its rivers — keep collecting.