How to recycle!

This post is primarily motivated by my fellow apartment dwellers.  In the last months, I have taken pounds and pounds of trash out of the recycling bins that did not belong in there.  Styrofoam, plastic bags, a fleece blanket, clothing, bags filled with a mixture of unsorted garbage and recycling, containers filled with food, bags of just garbage including sopping wet paper towels and cigarette butts.  Of course, I'm not Super Woman, so I can't keep all of Corvallis' bins perfect.  These issues are probably at the very least annoying to the workers at Allied Waste.  Additionally, by improperly recycling you can even damage the recycling machines or soil other peoples' clean recycling so that it all gets taken to the landfill.  As an example, plastic bags jam the machines (Allied Waste is regularly sending messages pleading for people to stop putting any plastic bags in the bins).  Also, if you put food waste in the bin and it spreads over clean recycling, you'll likely be the cause of all of said recycling being taken to the landfill instead of recycled.  So, here are three basic steps to make the recycling process work properly.

1. Try to not need to!  What I mean is that you should hopefully be trying to need to recycle less by creating less waste in general.  For example, perhaps you can buy things in the bulk section (using a reusable bag, perhaps?!) instead of buying it off the shelf with all the the included packaging.

But for the things you still need to recycle...

2. Go to the website of your garbage pick-up company, and learn what they accept and what they don't.  Here's the website for those of you in Corvallis.  For example, it might surprise you that they don't accept any plastic bags (although they can be taken directly to the recycling depot) or paper drink cups (did you know that most of them actually have a plastic layer?).  However, you might be equally surprised that they do accept milk cartons and aseptic containers like the ones broth comes in.  If you have questions, you can always call and ask.

3.  Now that you know what recycles and what doesn't, make sure that you sort things out.  If glass needs to be in a separate bin, make sure it is or you might be contaminating recycling or even endangering someone with the glass shards.  Also, remember to rinse/wash your containers free of food substances.