Recycling study could prompt some changes
To understand why tons of recyclable aluminum cans, cardboard boxes and newspapers end up buried in the dump every week, Orange County solid waste employees peeked into every recycling cart in one neighborhood for two months. The snooping paid off. The surprising results prompted county officials to rejigger their recycling pitch and could lead to changes in how Orange County deals with sanitation scofflaws who toss nonrecyclables into county-issued, bluelid recycling bins.
Here’s a by-the-numbers look at the study. David Gregory, named Orange County’s solid-waste manager earlier this year.
All recycling loads from the neighborhood had been rejected because they were mixed with things like grass clippings, food waste, dog waste, greasy pizza boxes and other nonrecyclable stuff.
“We realized we had some things we needed to improve in our recycling program,” Gregory said.
The total number of “Oops!” tags stuck on recycling roll-carts during the study by solid-waste crews who looked in your recycling bin.
An “Oops!” tag meant you goofed up and put a lot of items in your recycling bin that cannot be recycled.
During the study, the biggest problem was plastic bags. Keep them out, Gregory said. “It's not that used plastic bags can't be recycled into new materials — they simply require a different collection system and processing equipment than many curbside recycling programs use,” according to a plastics website.
Plastic bags — like those used to carry groceries home from Publix — can get tangled in processing equipment and shut down the recycling facility, Gregory said. The county has launched a “no-bags” recycling campaign, highlighted by a video.
Plastic bags can often be dropped off for recycling at Publix, Target and other retailers or by searching for a location near you at plasticfilmrecycling.org.
The number of households that tried to recycle during the eight-week pilot program.
Participation was impressive, Gregory said.
According to the data, 86 percent of the homes rolled their recycling cart to the curb at least once.
“We saw a definite uptick in improvement,” Gregory said.
In the first week, only 100 homes did it perfectly. By week