Recycling: Why isn’t CCRRA a single stream program? Explaining Centre County’s recycling rules
For the first few months of 2024, I have been focusing on helping our residents recycle more. A few readers have asked if I could explain why we ask for recyclables the way we do. Many of you have lived in other parts of the country and recognize that recycling practices can vary from state to state and even from town to town. I will try to explain why we recycle the way we do in Centre County.
Why do we have to bag paper?
If you are a curbside recycling customer, bagging/bundling paper is a must. Loose paper can fly out of your bins or our trucks and cause litter. Bagging/bundling paper actually causes our employees an extra step once the paper arrives at our facility (de-bagging/de-bundling). Securing paper materials helps to prevent fly-a-ways that become litter. Also, collecting bagged paper curbside helps to save the shoulders and backs of our employees as they are able to throw the bags of paper into the truck without dumping the entire bin. If you use the recycling drop-off boxes around town or the blue carts, there is no need to bag your paper – this rule applies to curbside recycling customers only.
Why can’t we put miscellaneous plastics in our curbside recycling bins?
Our current truck collection capacity is not feasible to collect miscellaneous plastics at the curb. Most miscellaneous plastic is large and bulky and would fill our trailers at a rate that would cause us to make too many trips to our facility to empty – it is just not efficient. Our trucks were designed to accept the plastic we took at the time, years before we added miscellaneous plastic to our operation. We do have six drop off recycling locations across the county to recycle miscellaneous plastic.
Why aren’t we a single stream program?
Single stream recycling programs use a large cart with a lid for collection of all recyclable material. Residents place all of their recyclable material in said cart that is usually picked up by an automated truck without the driver checking the material. The average contamination of material in a single stream recycling program is 20-25%. The contamination experienced in our curbside recycling program is close to zero as our collection crews only takes the items that are accepted (and that we know we can sell) in our program. In addition, a few years ago we had an outside consultant conduct a study to determine whether we should move to a single stream recycling program and their answer was “no.” We are currently producing clean products that our recycling markets are seeking.
Why do we have to recycle?
This one is easy. In many areas in Centre County, recycling is the law. But I like to answer that question with: Recycling creates jobs (we employ 75), recycling saves our natural resources (which are not endless), recycling saves landfill space (which is also not endless) and recycling saves energy. I think those are some pretty good reasons for us to continue recycling.
Thank you for doing your part to recycle in Centre County.