Recology Humboldt strives to lessen Recycling Contamination

Samoa, Ca., (KIEM) It’s been a year since Recology Humboldt took over a contract to process recycling in its Samoa location.

But they still need your help to improve the recycling process.

Linda Wise with the Recology center said residents can do three things to help them out.

One way is to clean out your containers. Another is not bagging your recyclable items before putting them in the bin, to avoid contamination. 

They also want you to make better choices as consumers before going to the store.

“Everybody pays for recycling processing,” said Wise. “What it does is it affects our ability to market material. And so, offset of being able to use that material to send it to a market, the financial offset isn’t there. If it’s dirty, we have to throw it out and then that increases the cost for recycling processing and that’s what adds to that 25% on up. We really need to get that number down.”

According to Wise, when you’re going out shopping, paper or glass are the better choices to pick up.