Recycling Done Right campaign launched

Building on the success of an earlier education program, Clark County and its regional partners recently launched Recycling Done Right.

This new outreach effort will remind residents that all plastic bags, plastic wrap and glass should be separated from other materials going into blue recycle carts.

The goal of the outreach effort is to reduce contaminants in the recycling cart at single-family homes and ultimately the recycling stream. Every type of plastic bag and plastic wrap clogs machinery at the local recycling facility, causing shut-downs and posing a danger to workers who must manually remove it. Glass fragments degrade materials that go into making recycled products.

Glass must be placed in a separate container at the curb. Plastic bags and plastic wrap may be taken to local grocery stores that accept bags for recycling. They are not accepted in the curbside collection program.

Recycling items are commodities sold at market prices, bringing money back to local jurisdictions for regional solid waste programs.

“The better the recycling stream, the more citizens benefit from lower processing costs and higher revenues,” said Don Benton, Environmental Services director.

Clark County has made great strides in recycling during the past 15 years. The number of residents using Waste Connections’ recycling service and amount of recyclables have climbed steadily, while the volume of garbage going into landfills has declined.

Still, a 2014 study found that approximately 17 percent of recycling material in both incorporated and unincorporated areas is contaminated. Two years earlier, a similar Recycling Done Right outreach effort found contamination dropped after single-family home residents received educational material.

The Recycling Done Right outreach is supported by a partnership among Battle Ground, Camas, Clark County, La Center, Ridgefield, Vancouver, Washougal, Waste Connections and Yacolt.

Here’s how it will work:

Employees wearing safety vests and county identification and driving vehicles marked with Clark County’s logo will stop at about 20,000 curbside recycling carts at single-family homes once in the next four weeks. They will not dig through a cart’s contents, but might lift items on top for a better view. They will leave educational materials on the cart, reminding residents to separate glass and plastic bags and wrapping.

Residents will not be penalized if inappropriate items are found, but rather encouraged to go online to learn more about recycling and a chance to win prizes.

Single-family home residents on selected routes will receive an automated phone call shortly before workers visit the neighborhoods, which were selected as a representative county sample.

To measure the effectiveness of the outreach effort, workers at the recycling center will compare the amounts and types of materials from the curbside recycling program before the outreach with what is collected after the outreach effort.

This is the first phase of what could be a multiyear effort to remove plastic bags, glass and other contaminants from the waste stream. Eventually, the partnership hopes to reach all 111,000 single-family homes in Clark County that use blue recycling carts.

Recycling Done Right hopes to duplicate results of the 2012 pilot program. In it, workers visited selected recycling carts twice, leaving recycling information the first time. Results of the program found that:

83 percent of carts that contained plastic bags on the first visit did not contain them on the second visit.

96 percent of carts that contained glass bottles on the first visit did not contain them on the second visit.

78 percent of carts that contained other various contaminants were contaminant-free the second time.

For more information about Recycling Done Right, please contact Clark County Environmental Services at (360) 397-2121 ext. 4352.