Flagstaff Waste's recycling program off to a good start

There’s a learning curve for everything, especially when things change so drastically.

Flagstaff residents made the change to one-drop mixed recycling to home sorting and separate bins for each product last fall.

“But you know what?” asks Murray Hampshire, Executive Director at Flagstaff Waste Management. “We’re doing pretty well, overall.”

Hampshire says the Tin is good. The Newsprint, surprisingly, great. The Cardboard is doing okay, too. “But we need to keep contaminated stuff out. Pizza boxes aren’t for recycling.”

He says we could do a little better with rinsing the Plastic, the first load that went to Camrose wasn’t great.

Oddly enough, we are doing the worst in our Office Paper recycling.

“I think people are getting mixed up with the ‘Mixed Paper’ loads we used to have,” says Hampshire.

Unfortunately, the potential for Office Paper to be the most valuable load in the yard is lost when it is so contaminated.

Hampshire says the first full bins went straight to the landfill, as the contamination was just too great.

The second load, March 13, was physically decontaminated.

“It took four people five hours each.”

During that period, 589 lbs of newsprint were removed. Another 1,379 lbs of waste material was separated out.

These were glossy paper, magazines, books, cardboard, soiled paper products – including fast food bags with all the food scraps inside – and soiled containers. There were even plastic coat hangers and tin cans.

“It’s frustrating,” says Hampshire.

“The Newsprint, Cardboard, Tin, and “If-in-doubt,” bins are right there. Residents aren’t separating the loads. “We can do better, we
just have to remember that this is a clean bin.”

Remember that some things are not recyclable anymore. Glossy paper. Magazines . Books. These belong in the garbage, not theOffice Paper bin.

Hampshire says sometimes our best intentions work the hardest against us.

“Don’t wish-cycle.”

That’s us wishing something (like magazines) were recyclable, and putting them in the bin hoping for the best.

Or, that’s us forgetting what we are supposed to be putting in the bin and ‘wishing’ we’re getting it right. Well, we’re not, not
quite yet. But we’re trying.

Above: The items removed from the contaminated Office Paper recycling load earlier this month read like a ‘Where’s Waldo’ of what not to put in that bin (Can you find the tin can?). Left: the finished product, after 20 man-hours of sorting out 1,969 lbs of contaminated and not-recyclable materials, is usually a high-value load. Unfortunately, the load didn’t come close to covering the labour cost to sort.

Each bin has a label, and each label gives examples of acceptable and unacceptable items.

Every recycling site has an “If in doubt, throw it out” bin. There’s no shame in using it.

The Flagstaff Waste Management website: www.frswma.com has a link to recycling changes, where you can check every bin for what is and
isn’t acceptable.

Leslie Cholowsky, Editor