Recycling during the holidays

 The holiday season always brings a lot more materials than usual into everyone's homes. When it comes time for it to go, it is always better to recycle what is truly recyclable. The rest of it, like a number of things we use everyday, is landfill material if you have no options to reuse them.

 Most of the extra materials will be packaging of some type, either for food or gifts. Foil roaster pans, cardboard boxes, plastic milk jugs, and Christmas cards are all in abundance this time of year. These are excellent materials to recycle and there are really not any good reasons left these days to put them in the garbage. Corrugated cardboard is not allowed your garbage anyway. There are major shortages of these recyclable materials in the world today, too.

Some of the extra materials cannot be recycled and may have to go in the trash, as they are considered major contaminants in the recycling business. No viable recycling markets exist for them and they significantly slow down the operation of the recycling center. The most common things that are major contaminants are Styrofoam, bubble wrap, paper milk/eggnog cartons, bows, ribbons, and wrapping paper. Yes, wrapping paper. There was a time long ago that it was actually paper. Now it is almost all a type of plastic laminated material that the paper mills just cannot use.
 
Winneshiek County Recycling would like to thank everyone for doing such a great job of recycling in 2010. While most recycling programs have experienced a decline in intake the last few years due to the economy, ours has increased.

Contact:  
                  Terry Buenzow
                  Winneshiek County Recycling
                  Department Manager
                  563-382-6514
                  recycling@co.winneshiek.ia.us