BradfordToday contacted Willma Bureau, contracts and collections supervisor with the County of Simcoe’s Solid Waste Management department, for information on the do’s and don’ts of recycling and trash disposal.
The resulting article generated quite a bit of interest, and a batch of new questions on trash etiquette.
White paper – bag it, or leave it loose in the blue box? “It’s always better that it’s not bagged,” said Bureau. “It has to be removed from the bags” before it can be processed – creating an extra step. If homeowners are worried about loose paper blowing in the wind, just stack the blue boxes, she said, or place heavy items on top.
What about staples in paper? “The purer we can provide a product to a recycler, the better,” Bureau noted. But the staples are removed in the pulping process, anyway. “We don’t expect people to take the staples out,” she said, noting that goes for metal staples, packing tape and glue used in some cardboard packaging. “It gets removed in the repulping process."
What about other paper products? Manila envelopes are “fine,” as long as they aren’t lined with plastic or bubble wrap: if they are, they are trash. Window envelopes are fine. “If people are able to remove the windows, that would be lovely,” but it’s not expected, said Bureau. Even coloured construction paper can be recycled. “If it has sparkles and googly eyes attached to it, that’s less desirable,” said Bureau. Processors want the paper, “not the sparkles and googly eyes.”
Soup and broth cartons, which contain multiple materials – including paper, foil and plastics? They can be recycled through a special process, but should be placed in the bin with the cans and bottles, not paper. “We see a lot of these in the paper stream,” which is a problem, said Bureau. “They are actually sent to a very different facility, where they have a different process to separate the layers.”
Are there limits on the amount of pet poop that can be put in the green bin? Not exactly, said Bureau. “Poop is wet, and it is quite heavy. A green bin full of pet poop is heavy – we have a weight limit,” she said, noting that extra green bins are available for homeowners with multiple pets.
Then there is the question of bagging pet waste. Small amounts can simply be wrapped in newspaper, but in most cases, the poop ought to be bagged, in a compostable bag – paper, or the kind of liner bags used for kitchen compost. The problem with using only a “biodegradable” bag is that the term is so loose, Bureau said. “It means it will biodegrade at some point. It could be 500 years.” Look for bags with a compostable and BPI (Biodegradable Product Institute) logo on the label to ensure the bags will meet the timelines of municipal composting.
Pet poop is a big issue. “People don’t appreciate how much pet poop is in the waste stream,” Bureau said, noting that the county found that about 6,000 metric tonnes of pet waste are put out for collection each year – waste that used to go into the garbage.
“It’s 7.4 per cent of the entire curbside waste stream. That’s a lot,” she said.
What about diapers? In the trash. “Maybe in the future…” said Bureau.
Bureau was asked to identify the biggest issues in blue-box recycling – the items that show up repeatedly, contaminating the recyclable collection, and leading to additional expense to remove them.
“Probably the biggest thing we see is film plastic – plastic bags and overwrap,” she said. “Polystyrene is another one, as in packaging, meat trays…. And then there is just 'stuff.'"
Bureau calls it “wish cycling”: the bits of plastic, metal hangers, used pots and pans, china, mirrors, broken glass, etc. that people may toss in the blue bin, telling themselves, “Oh well, maybe they’ll take it.”
It’s stuff that belongs in the trash, or, in the case of metals, in a scrap metal collection, but not a blue bin – and it “ends up costing a lot of money to put things in the garbage.”
Part of the problem is that different municipalities accept different items for recycling. What’s acceptable in Toronto or York Region, say, may not be in Simcoe County.
Although the province is looking at standardizing blue-box collection items, right now it is best to check with the county’s Waste Wizard at simcoe.ca/SolidWasteManagement.
