VC Star
By David Goldstein
1/11/25
WM, formerly Waste Management Inc., recently distributed a flier calling on customers to “free your recyclables,” urging recyclers to “leave it loose” by not bagging recyclables in curbside carts and commercial bins.
As the largest recycler in North America, WM created the flier two years ago, noting bags are “one of the biggest contaminants.” Bags are still problematic. As staff at both the Del Norte Regional Recycling and Transfer Station in Oxnard and the Gold Coast Recycling and Transfer Station in Ventura confirmed, at the least, plastic bags add another step to recycling, increasing costs. Workers must break open bags at the beginning of sorting lines before automated and manual processes can access materials. Besides the additional cost of slowing down the recycling process to accommodate bag breaking, this step adds risks to workers.
To avoid missing a bag filled with valuable recyclables that customers made the effort to keep separate from garbage, workers try to open every bag collected from a recycling cart or recycling bin. However, sometimes people bag materials because the items inside the bag are dirty, covered in food residue, or worse. Although a small amount of solidified residue on bottles and cans is acceptable and will burn off in the high-temperature recycling processes for glass, metal or plastic, exposing sorters to sticky, stinky filth of liquid residue or large chunks of rotting waste can be dangerous. It certainly can reduce workers’ motivation to open every bag.
When some bags, or pieces of torn-open bags, get past the sorters, the film plastic can interfere with machinery. Plastic film sometimes wraps around conveyor belts and sorting equipment, requiring sorting center operators to shut down the recycling process several times a day. Workers must climb onto or into the machinery and cut plastic bags out of gears and screens. This can pose risks to workers and increase the cost of recycling.
Liquid and other objectionable material is sometimes introduced into recycling bins because of wastebasket or recycling container liners inside homes or in office breakrooms. A single careless recycler might leave a puddle or a blob of rotting waste at the bottom of a liner, and a responsible person in a home or a dedicated custodian in a business may inadvertently dump the contaminant into a recycling container. Avoid this problem by checking liners for food or liquid contamination before you empty the recyclable materials into the recycling dumpster. Reuse the liner, take it back to one of the few remaining retailers with plastic bag drop-off bins, or dispose of the liner in the trash, preferably with some trash inside it so it does not blow out of carts during collection or trucks during transport.
I occasionally get calls from older recyclers who still follow the original curbside recycling instructions they received in the 1990s. They want to know if they should keep bagging paper, and if not, what changed. Many things have changed. In the 1990s, clean paper was valuable, so keeping paper free of contaminants was a higher priority. Also, newspaper at that time was about 70 percent of a typical curbside cart or box, so bagging was easy. By volume, cardboard has become the major component of both curbside carts and commercial bins, so bagging is not even possible for most paper.
According to recycling trade publications, baled newspaper is now worth less than $10 per ton, which is lower than the cost to bale it for shipment. Cardboard is worth nearly $100 per ton, but the labor to assemble a ton is also high, especially when boxes are not collapsed. Mixed office paper rose from $33 at the beginning of last year to $70 per ton in June, before falling again at the end of 2024. The economic value of recyclables affects the fees sorting centers charge, and in the long-term, this affects the rates customers pay for curbside collection service, so it is for both economic reasons and environmental reasons as well as worker safety that recyclers should “keep it clean.” However, rather than bagging, the way to do this is to pour out all liquids and scrape off all major residues. A quick rinse is worthwhile for some items, such as jelly jars.
The exception to the “stay loose” rule for recycling is with food waste recycling in most of Ventura County. In areas collected by Harrison, WM, Oxnard and Port Hueneme, food waste should be bagged before being placed in curbside organics carts or commercial organics recycling bins. In Athens areas, bagging is allowed but not preferred. Because food must be transported to distant facilities for composting, but yard clippings can be recycled locally, collectors using local facilities separate the bagged food waste from yard clippings, reducing the cost and environmental impact of transportation.
Rules for Ventura County’s residential haulers:
WM: www.wm.com/us/en/recycle-right
Harrison: ejharrison.com/recycling-guidelines/
Athens: athensservices.com/recycling-guide/
Oxnard: www.oxnard.gov/public-works/environmental-resources/trash-pickup
Port Hueneme: www.ci.port-hueneme.ca.us/1080/Garbage-Recycling
David Goldstein, an Environmental Resource Analyst with the Ventura County Public Works Agency, may be reached at 805-658-4312 or david.goldstein@ventura.org.
