What are the finer points of recycling: What happens after you put your recyclables in the cart?
Have you ever wondered what happens to your recycling after you put it at the curb or drop it off at a community-recycling site?
One of the most important things to understand about recycling is that once an item has been collected as recycling, it cannot simply be thrown away as trash. Recycling is part of a separate process designed to recover materials and give them another life.
It is actually against state law to throw items away that have been collected as recycling. Minnesota has a state statute that tells us that we need to seek special permission to throw recyclables away once collected as such and landfills are not supposed to accept them unless special permission has been granted.
Another common misconception is that recycling must be collected by a completely different truck than garbage. In many cases, the same type of collection truck may be used to collect both trash and recycling but they do not collect them at the same time.
What matters is what happens to the material after collection. Recycling is kept separate and transported through a different system so it can eventually be sorted and marketed.
Here in Lyon County, your curbside recycling begins a journey that takes it through several locations.
After it is collected, the material moves from Lyon County to Redwood County, where it is taken to a transfer station. From there, the recycling continues on to Shakopee, where it reaches a facility called Dem-Con, which is equipped to sort the materials.
At the sorting facility, the mixed recycling is separated into different types of materials. Paper, cardboard, metals, plastics and other recyclable materials are sorted and prepared for the next step. These recovered materials are then sold to manufacturers who use them as raw materials to make new products.
Community recycling drop sites follow a similar path. Materials placed at Lyon County community recycling drop sites are collected by Lyon County staff and transported through the same recycling channels as curbside recycling. Whether you put your recyclables in your curbside cart or take them to a community drop site, those materials continue through the recycling system to be sorted and processed. However, here is an important distinction: not everything Lyon County accepts for recycling or special handling belongs in your curbside recycling cart or community recycling drop site.
Lyon County Environmental accepts a variety of other items, either free of charge or for a small fee, but these materials require different processing. They are not collected through the curbside recycling process or the community recycling drop site process.
Instead, residents need to bring these materials directly to the Household Hazardous Waste Facility in Marshall or, depending on the material, take them through a separate disposal avenue at the Lyon County Landfill.
Quite often these, “outside of the cart” recyclables are transported to other locations than Dem-Con in Shakopee. There are some that may go to the Cosmos/Hutchinson area while others may go to St. Cloud or even Wisconsin.
This is why it is important to know where an item belongs before putting it out for collection. Just because Lyon County accepts an item, does not necessarily mean it belongs in your recycling cart.
Therefore, the next time you put your recycling cart at the curb or visit a community recycling drop site, remember that you are sending valuable materials on a journey.
They will be transported, sorted and prepared to be sold and potentially made into something new.
Recycle right. Recycle responsibly. And when in doubt, ask Lyon County Environmental where an item belongs before putting it in the recycling.
