In an effort to reduce garbage and prohibited items dumped at area recycling sites, citizens are being asked to separate their recyclables and only put them in the proper dumpster. If the item doesn’t match what’s described on the label, it doesn’t belong in the dumpster. “We don’t want our recyclables contaminated,” Carroll Columbiana Harrison Solid Waste District Director Missy Burchfield said.
For many years, residents could put all their paper products, newspapers, cardboard, plastic bottles, aluminum or metal cans and glass bottles and jars all together in the same dumpster. Due to the sites looking like garbage dumps and problems with improper items being left in the containers, or beside, in front of or behind them, Burchfield said the decision was made to have residents separate their items. No more co-mingling of paper, glass, plastic, metal or cardboard.
The district received a $40,000 education outreach grant last year from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency for the new labels to place on the containers. The label change was completed in Carroll County and now the work is about half done in Columbiana County. The five categories for recyclables are cardboard, glass bottles and jars, plastic bottles and jugs, aluminum and steel cans, and paper.