Whether it is done at home, at work or in places you visit throughout your community, the effort you take to place a clean item into a recycling bin helps our environment. Waste Management of the Inland Empire reminds its customers of the importance of recycling.
“As North America’s largest residential recycler, we want to encourage our customers to continue, and to improve upon, their good recycling habits,” said Julie Reyes of Waste Management. “It is important to keep non-recyclable material out of the recycling bin, find ways to reduce the amount of waste you generate, recycle all you can and close the recycling loop by buying recycled materials,” Reyes added that many items that are thrown away easily can be recycled simply by placing the clean item in the recycle bin instead of the trash bin.
Curbside recycling programs take recyclables to a materials recovery center where local workers use advanced processing equipment to sort the items into containers of metal, plastic, wood, paper, cardboard and glass. The sorted materials are compressed into large rectangular bales and shipped to processing plants where most are made into new products.
“It takes a lot of recyclables to make these large bales, so we encourage our customers to recycle as much as they can to make the process work efficiently,” Reyes added. While recycling as much as possible is important, it’s also critical for residents to keep items that cannot be recycled out of recycling containers. This helps ensure these items can be turned into something new, thereby renewing the lifecycle of that product. Cleaner recyclables mean less cost to process and higher value to those who purchase the recycled material. It also helps guarantee that the items will not be rejected by the end-user.
Waste Management of the Inland Empire accepts the following items:
aluminum and metal food and beverage cans
glass bottles, jars and containers (without the lids)
newspaper, paper bags, catalogs, chipboard (cereal, cracker, shoe boxes) computer paper, construction paper, egg cartons, envelopes, junk mail, magazines, telephone books and white and colored paper
plastic bottles, jugs and jars
corrugated cardboard (flattened)
Non-acceptable items in this area include:
non-container plastic such as plastic bags, plastic wrap, hoses, toys, plastic plates, cups and straws
moisture or food contaminated papers such as paper plates, pizza boxes, cups, napkins, towels or tissues
mirrors, light bulbs, drinking glasses, window glass and ceramics
Polystyrene cups, food trays and packing materials
hazardous waste, needles or medical waste
For more information on recycling visit www.keepinginlandempireclean.com