Plastic bags don't belong in recycling

Many times when I walk in our neighborhood before the recycling truck has come by, I notice many blue carts with their lids partly open because of plastic grocery bags and/or garbage bags filled with recycling materials sticking out over the top. When recycling began, the directions were that we were NOT to place plastic bags into the recycling bins but were to recycle them at grocery stores or other such places.

Today I saw someone placing a huge filled plastic bag into the blue cart. So, thinking that perhaps I was unaware of a change in the protocol for recycling plastic bags, I called the Public Works Department. The woman said that the original rule still stands. We are NOT to put plastic bags into the carts. She said that workers sort the materials and remove all of the plastic bags. I asked what they do with them. She said that they are directed to the garbage. Thus all of that potentially recyclable material ends up in the landfill.

Apparently the directions are printed in the original recycling brochure and on the Mt. Prospect website. I suspect that a lot of people don't read either of these. I suggested that perhaps they could reiterate the rules in the quarterly bulletin that they publish, or use their email notification system or perhaps the phone system. It's such a shame because so many things that people think that they are recycling, are ending up in the garbage.

Betty Grenda

Mount Prospect