Preparation helps recycling crews

Most who live in central Pennsylvania would probably agree that this area will never be famous for its beautiful winter weather. In fact, the winters around here can get downright nasty. But even in the freezing rain, snow and sleet, the trash and recycling collection crews are still out on the streets picking everything up.

There are a few simple things that we, as residents, can do to help make it a little easier on the crews during the winter. One thing would be to salt or shovel your driveway as well as the sidewalk in front of your home. If you live on a corner, please try to shovel an opening wide enough for a wheelchair from the sidewalk to the street.

This serves two purposes: One, it allows for those who use a wheelchair safe passage onto and off sidewalks, and two, it allows collection crews easy access to pull their toter onto the sidewalk for back door collection customers.

Residents should not shovel or blow snow onto the street as this can create slippery conditions for collection crews and the traveling public.

Realize that bad weather can delay (or speed up) the time the crews can get to your residence. To ensure collection, have your trash and recycling out by 7 a.m. Customers who live on private lanes should be aware that they may not have their bins picked up unless roads are cleared of snow and ice.

Helping to keep sidewalks, driveways and private lanes clear of snow and ice can do a lot to help keep our workers safe this winter.

For the second half of this month’s column, I thought I’d mention a few things about plastic grocery bags and recycling. We have been receiving a lot of calls on this subject lately.

Plastic shopping bags can be recycled at drop-off bins in grocery stores, as most of our readers already know. All local grocery stores have plastic bag recycling containers available.

Authority staff would like to remind residents not to place plastic grocery bags in the drop-off recycling bins. However, we do ask that curbside recycling customers use paper or plastic bags to contain paper in their curbside bins. Newspaper should be bagged separate from magazines, catalogs, office paper and pressed paperboard. Shredded paper should always be bagged.

Plastic bags are especially a hindrance to the authority’s commercial recycling staff. At each stop, our commercial drivers get out of their truck and empty bins into specialized recycling compartments. The recycling bins must be free of contamination before the contents can be emptied into the truck, which means ripping open and disposing of any plastic bags that might be holding recyclable material.

As you can imagine, this can take quite a bit of time at each stop. Removing plastic bags before placing recyclables in the bins would really help our drivers out. However, as stated above, shredded paper should be bagged.

As always, thanks for recycling.

Amy Schirf is an education coordinator with the Centre County Solid Waste Authority.