How to guide on recycling in the Northwest suburbs
Editor's note: The writer, finding herself and others confused about what's recyclable, reached out to the Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County and wrote up this advice, which she's been passing out at various places, including the Arlington Heights Senior Center. She lives in Mount Prospect.
Recycling - yes! But unless we follow the rules, much of the benefit is lost. We need to understand the process in order to get the greatest good from our efforts.
The contents of your recycling bin are dumped into a truck designed to haul recyclables. The truck offloads the materials at its designated processing center. The communities listed below are served by SWANCC: Arlington Heights, Barrington, Buffalo Grove, Elk Grove Village, Evanston, Glencoe, Glenview, Hoffman Estates, Inverness, Kenilworth, Lincolnwood, Morton Grove, Mount Prospect, Niles, Palatine, Park Ridge, Prospect Heights, Rolling Meadows, Skokie, South Barrington, Wheeling, Wilmette and Winnetka.
At the processing center, materials are dumped onto a conveyor belt, run through various machines and checked by hand.
Paper
It can be damp or dry. It cannot be greasy or waxy. Paper is mixed with water to make a slurry for new paper products, and any grease/wax in the slurry rises to the top and ruins the batch.
Another thing that cannot go into paper recycling is foil - found mostly on greeting cards or the inside flap of envelopes during the holiday season. No glitter, either. Envelopes with windows, stamps, address labels are all right.
Shredded paper messes up the sorting machines - leave it out of the recycling bin. No paper towels, toilet paper, facial tissue or tissue paper.
Gable-top (milk) cartons, juice cartons, broth cartons with small plastic lids (rinse these and replace the lid) are all OK - their coating is a plastic that is removed during processing. Any cardboard coated with wax (i.e., butter boxes) goes into the garbage. Flatten cardboard boxes when possible.
Biodegradable containers - starting to be used by some fast-food places, break down quickly, but need to go into the garbage, not the recycling bin.
Glass
Glass is easier. Recycle bottles and jars only - clear, brown, blue and green are the reusable colors. Remove tops. No need to remove labels.
Plastic
No bags or plastic film wrap. Take that to your supermarket or wherever there's a receptacle for them.
No plastic utensils, plates, toys, plant pots, straws.
No. 6 - Styrofoam - can be taken to Abt Electronics for recycling. (Any other plastic with a 6 should go into the garbage.) The address is 1200 W. Milwaukee in Glenview. Only large, white Styrofoam packing pieces with no printing are acceptable, and no Styrofoam peanuts. UPS will accept clean Styrofoam peanuts for reuse.
No. 1-5: Empty and rinse out plastic containers, including milk jugs, and put the lids back on. (This is a fairly recent change.) Labels can be left on plastic containers. (If there is no recycling triangle on a plastic container, it should go into the garbage.)
Metal
Aluminum cans, clean aluminum food trays and foil (not crumpled), ferrous metal cans and tops, (rinse cans and leave tops attached or put inside of can.) No bottle caps or small pieces of metal - for example, nuts, bolts, screws. These can jam up the sorting machines.
Bottom line
Recycling is a bit complicated, but it's worth the effort. Batches of recycled material that are contaminated can't be sold, and they become part of the landfill problem. Let's all do it and do it right.
Questions? Email Mary Allen, SWANCC Recycling and Education director, at mary@swancc.org.