Don't Trash Your Recycling Cart!

Reprinted from EARTH MATTERS, Environmental News from Pierce County.

Are you putting trash in your recycling cart?

Pierce County households averaged 1 pound of nonrecyclables in the recycling cart each month last year. Now the average is up to 13/4 pounds per month - a 75% increase.

Nonrecyclable materials make trucks fill up faster. That requires more routes, more labor, more fuel and higher costs.

Costs also increase because more sorting is needed ot separate contaminates from potential recyclables.

To keep our contamination low, here are a few suggestions:

Plastic bags, styrofoam and clamshell containers are contaminants that cannot be collected in our curbside program.

Lets review: Plastic bottles must have a neck smaller than a base. For example: bottles that contained water, soda, ketchup or shampoo.

We cannot recycle plasitc containers without a "neck" such as margarine tubs, yougurt containers, clamshell containers and drinking cups.

Plastic bags and glass need to be recycled in other ways. They damage machines and may injure workers during the sorting process.

Glass shards also get caught in paper and other materials, lowering their value for manufacturers.

It's a step backward when we consider the positive growth. Since our single cart recycling program began in 2005, households are recycling 64% more paper, 94% more aluminum and 33% more tin cans.

Also noteworkth: Each household recycles an average of 34 plastic bottles (20 oz size) per month.

Here are examples of the leading trouble shpots and tips to help solve the contamination problem.

PROBLEM: Plastic bags and film like shrink wrap. These materials get caught and wrap around the sorting machinery. Recyclables should be loose, not encolsed in a clear or black plastic bag.

TIP: Take plastic shopping bags to participting grocery stores for recycling. Use cloth or other reusable shopping bags just one could save 100-200 plastic bags per year.

PROBLEM: Butter tubs, yougurt-type containers and bottles from pesticides, herbicides or authomotive fluids. Containers with a recycling symbol may not necessarily be recyclable.

Be sure to "check the neck". We only accept plastic bottles with an opning that's smaller than the base.

PROBLEM: Glass in our comingled recycling carts may injure workers and damage equipment in the sorthing facility. Broken glass also ends up in bales of recycled paper, damaging expensive equipment at paper mills.

TIP: Glass collected at various drop-off sites is emptied directly into shipping containers and marketed.

For more information on being a responsible recycler visit http://www.piercecountywa.org/ or call (253) 798-2179.