Recycling and Separating

While many cities offer recycling programs in which employees of the city will actually collect all of your recycling on trash day for you, not many people take advantage of this program. This is a disturbing fact because recycling is such an important part to saving our environment. If we can reuse what we have already manufactured we will save time, money, and natural resources. Here is a brief overview on what can be recycled and how it should be separated.

Items such as cans, food and beverage containers, glass bottles and jars, plastic bottles, and aluminum foil can all be recycled. Before laying these items in a bin on your street corner you should first remove the caps or lids and then rinse them clean.

For items like old magazines, phone books, and newspapers you should keep them dry until pickup day. Another important note is that you cannot have more than 20 lbs worth of newspaper or magazines to recycle at one time.
You can also recycle cardboard food boxes, office paper, and mail, but first you should flatten the boxes and remove any plastic from them.

Why is it important to separate what you recycle? When you sort, you are allowing city employees to do their job more efficiently. By being more productive in their day they in turn generate a bigger revenue to the city. This extra revenue allows the city to run programs promoting a clean city and also to cover current operating costs. Separating and recycling also allows cities to develop voucher programs for their residents.