‘Can I recycle this?’: New Waste Connections program intends to ‘educate at the curb’

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In an effort to provide first-hand recycling feedback to residents, local waste management agency Waste Connections launched its “Recycle Right Program” last week. 

On Jan. 20, recycling advocates from the agency began visiting neighborhoods across Clark County to place reminder tags on recycling carts that contain contaminated recycling items such as plastic shopping bags and shredded paper. 

“Our drivers have been tagging (carts) for years now,” Waste Connections Recycling Manager Josy Wright said. “If they happen to see contamination in the cart, they will leave a tag for our customers.”

Wright said a new contract between Waste Connections and the City of Vancouver was signed last April and part of the contract required Waste Connections to provide a “curbside contamination reduction plan,” and thus the Recycle Right program was born. 

“We were able to hire two recycling advocates to help reduce contamination at the curb,” Wright said, later mentioning that the advocates will not dig through the recycling but just briefly look inside for any contaminating material. “They don’t touch anything in the cart.”

Along with plastic bags and shredded paper, which make up a large majority of contaminated materials, Wright said styrofoam, freezer packaging, to-go items and clothing also make their way into the recycling carts and cause problems at the transfer facilities. 

“We need to clean up our material,” Wright said. “We used to send a lot of our stuff to China but it wasn’t clean enough. So we are trying to keep it clean and trying to find domestic markets so we can market our stuff here.”



According to Wright, where the recycling ends up depends on the material and who is buying it. A lot of aluminum material goes to the midwest while paper gets sent to a mill in Longview. 

“It just depends on what’s going on in the market,” Wright said. 

Wright mentioned that Waste Connections doesn’t go by the recycling numbers on the bottom of many items but goes by size and shape instead. 

“If it’s a bottle, tub or jug and it’s bigger than your fist, you can go ahead and put in the blue cart,” Wright said. “That’s why we can’t do shredded paper.”

Along with tagging recyclers’ carts on the curb, Wright said Waste Connections released an app to help with educating consumers. Wright mentioned that Recycle Right is a free app that sends alerts about weather and when recycling day is. Along with this, customers can search for an item in the database and the app will tell them how to recycle that item. To go with the phone app, the City of Vancouver has a recycling 101 class for people wanting to learn more about what to recycle and how to do it properly in Clark County. For more information on the Recycle Right app and Recycling 101 classes, visit clark.wa.gov/public-health/recycling-z.

“We just want people to get every tool they can to help them recycle better,” Wright concluded.