Picture this: You buy something shiny and new that is recyclable, and then bring it home. After serving its purpose, you hope to give it a second life through recycling or some other special disposal program. Your trusty item leaves your house, gets a sorting makeover at the materials recovery facility, transforms into something fabulous (sometimes it even becomes what it was before, like aluminum cans), and then heads off to be reborn in the manufacturing world. And voilà, you’re back at square one, buying it all over again!
Aluminum and steel or tin cans are the rock stars of this recycling gig. They’re like the superheroes of sustainability, infinitely recyclable and made mostly from recycled materials. In fact, 75% of these cans continue to be recycled today. While most of them keep playing the same tune, aluminum and steel sometimes moonlight as car parts, spaceships, or even kitchen foil.
Throwing these items away? That’s like tossing out the best of the best! Once they hit the landfill, their encore is over. So, please, give them a chance to shine again by recycling!
Got bits and bobs of metal hanging around, like garden ornaments, bicycles, or that treadmill you swore you’d use? First, see if anyone else wants to give them a whirl. If not, recycle them through a special disposal program, as these items cannot go into our curbside carts or community recycling drop sites. There’s a metal box at the landfill waiting to take your unwanted metal goodies for free, or call Alter Metal in Marshall for help.
Got old paint cans sitting around? Or how about old chemical or cleaning supplies? If they’re empty or dried out, toss them in the trash or take them to the landfill yourself. They are not recyclable. Paint that is still liquid or chemicals still in their containers? They’re VIPs for the Household Hazardous Waste Facility.
Empty farm chemical containers get a special recycling treatment at the landfill for free, but prep them first and give Lyon County Landfill a call for the scoop on how to bring them to the landfill properly!
Keep these special recycled items out of your curbside recycling: Sharps (needles), car seats, mattresses, box springs, and shredded paper have their own VIP disposal programs.
Sharps, shredded paper and car seats are free to drop off at the Household Hazardous Waste Program, but mattresses will set you back $20 each. Box springs are free! Plastic totes and plant pots? Straight to the trash or haul them to Lyon County Landfill for a fee.
You may ask why it is that hardly any types of plastic are recyclable? The simple answer, though it is hard for everyone to hear, is that there are no end markets for these types of items. Zero. None! This is why only clean empty food containers especially those that are made from plastic are wanted in comparison to other plastic items such as kid’s pools, totes, and plastic flower pots for example. It has nothing to do with the chasing arrows with the number logo. This logo only tells us what kind of plastic that item is made from.
In the past, we used to go by this formula, but we no longer do so because there are many, many different shapes and forms of plastic out there with the same number on them: some are recyclable and some are not. For the time being, only recycle plastic items that used to hold food, drinkable liquids such as juice, or personal care items such as shampoo or laundry soap containers.
Now, about your recycling cart – be a good neighbor and roll it out the night before pickup! With 7,200 carts to empty on recycling week, missing pickup is a real bummer. The very latest that recycling carts can be placed out to the curb is BEFORE 6 a.m. on your recycling day. We know the wind has a bad sense of humor, but getting those carts out early helps us all. We are brainstorming to see if there is anything that we can do to help curb recycling blowing out of carts.
If your cart’s lid isn’t yellow, we’d like to swap it out for you. Need a bigger cart? We have 95-gallon carts ready to roll!
So, let’s keep the planet happy and our recycling game strong! The Lyon County Environmental Department is open Monday-Friday from 8 am to 4:30 pm and can be reached at (507) 532-8210. The Lyon County Landfill is open Monday-Friday from 6 am to 4 pm and can be reached at (507) 865-4615.
