Do you know what to recycle and what’s trash? Many don’t, officials say

What is recyclable and what's not?

We all think we are doing a good deed when we recycle something like a plastic bag. However, some of those items should be going in the trash instead. The City of Clearwater is calling out residents for recycling the wrong items.

CLEARWATER, Fla. - The City of Clearwater is calling on residents to be mindful of what they put in their recycling bins, after sharing that 50 percent of what crews collected as recycling lately ended up being garbage.

Recycling is not universal, since what’s allowed all depends on where you live.

"It could be filled with products in it that’s good, recycled products, but because it’s in a plastic bag it’s considered contaminated," said City of Clearwater Solid Waste Director Kervin St. Aimie.

He said they’ve run into some problems lately with improper recycling ruining entire batches collected.

"The last couple of weeks we had more contamination than normal," said St. Aimie. "If we are over percentage of contamination, which is about 25 percent, the vendor then flags those loads and calls those contaminated loads."

Clearwater officials said in August they collected 32 tons of recycling that ended up being rejected by their vendor that processes the items.

"The impact is we lose a whole load of recycling. So, if that load is flagged, the vendor then reaches out to us, and it’s stamped as rejected. It’s sent to the county and the county uses it as trash at that point," said St. Aimie.

It impacts the efforts of residents who are sorting the recycling in the first place and the workers driving the loads to the transfer station.

"There’s always going to be a fee even though we send it to the landfill as trash or send it to recycling," said St. Aimie about residents paying for the service. "But yes, because that product is reusable, we think it’s a waste because we could reuse that product. So that’s what’s frustrating about it."

Paper, cardboard, clean plastics numbers 1 through 7, cans and bottles are among the items that are all good for the City’s recycling program. Some common forbidden items they often find in their collections include Styrofoam, plastic bags, yard waste, batteries and greasy pizza boxes.

"We do audits on a regular basis. One of the things that we do if we find a barrel that’s contaminated, we’ll tag that barrel, put that information on that barrel," said St. Aimie.

He added that the customer can reach out and get an explanation as to why the barrel wasn’t picked up.

They also plan to update their blue bins from saying "solid waste/recycling" to just say "recycling," so there are fewer chances for people to get them confused with the black garbage bins that also say "solid waste/recycling."

The City said most residents do recycle correctly, and it helps the environment.

"One of the things we try to stress is if you’re in doubt, just throw it out," said St. Aimie.

The City said on a regular day they fill three to four tractor trailers with about 6,000 tons of recycling per tractor trailer for processing.

St. Aimie said the Solid Waste Department hopes to upgrade their trucks with cameras to be able to flag contaminated bins more easily, as workers currently report them when they see items sticking out of the bin.