 Sept 13th 2014 - By Eric Bradford Recycling is on the rise in the City of Asheville and that's no small feat. The City's "Big Blue Program" launched in 2012 has increased recycling by 87% over the previous year. Single stream recycling and better sorting technology has seen even helped to extend the life of the Buncombe County Landfill. All of this is incredible, but there are still ways that we can help this process along. What CAN'T go in Big BlueIn an effort to keep recycling costs at a minimum for the tax payers, we need to restrict the incorrect items that we're putting into Big Blue. The idea that "if I don't know if it's recyclable so I'll let the recycler sort it out" is causing expensive issues at the local Materials Recycling Facility. For a complete listing of acceptable items, follow this link: What goes in. Here are the items that are NOT accepted in Big Blue recycling bin. 1) Styrofoam (regardless of type and the number on the item) 2) Plastic bags, shopping bags, cereal bags, ziplock bags, shrinkwrap, dry cleaning bags, chip bags. 3) Plastic soda can rings 4) Plastic bubble wrap 5) Hard cover books 6) Non food related containers such as: motor oil bottles, batteries, caulking guns and paint cans 7) Garbage or Recycling Bags 8) Flower pots 9) Hard, bulky plastics (kiddie pools, toys, buckets, chairs) 10) Tooth brushes, plastic razors, cosmetic and soft plastic personal care containers. These items clog up the sorting equipment, causing wasted time in hand sorting and in some cases equipment damage. At least twice a day our local recycling facility is forced to shut down the entire sorting facility to send in people with box-cutters to cut the plastic bags out of the machinery by hand and remove these items. Help us keep the costs of recycling down by sorting out those items not allowed in the bin. So where can I recycle some of these items?
For questions about recycling efforts in the City of Asheville and Buncombe County please email Eric Bradford at the Asheville GreenWorks. Or phone 828-254-1776 Comments are closed.
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