Recycling
Citizens Collection Station
Hours are: Monday, Friday, Saturday 8am - 1pm; Wednesday 12pm - 5pm
The following materials are accepted for free at the Citizens Collection Station located at 244 Bray Street. This material must be clean and dry.
We accept:
What shouldn't go in the recycle bin?
Recycling
Hours are: Monday, Friday, Saturday 8am - 1pm; Wednesday 12pm - 5pm
The following materials are accepted for free at the Citizens Collection Station located at 244 Bray Street. This material must be clean and dry.
We accept:
- Paper & cardboard: books, newspaper, magazines, loose paper, junk mail, paper and cardboard boxes (no tissue, paper towels or other contaminated paper).
- Glass
- Plastics #1 -#5 & #7 (we do not accept #6 styrofoam or plastic bags)
- Motor Oil, Filters
- Antifreeze
- Tires (First four are free)
- Batteries (vehicle only)
- Metal: aluminum, steel, cast iron etc.
What shouldn't go in the recycle bin?
- Plastic bags
- It’s a very common mistake to place your recyclables into a plastic grocery bag and then place that bag in the bin. Please do not do this!
- Plastic bags cannot be recycled at the MRF, and in fact, can wrap around the screens. This can stop the machine and then stop the entire process.
- Pizza boxes
- Corrugated cardboard is usually recyclable, but only if it’s free of grease.
- What to do? Place the clean top of your pizza box in the recycling bin and throw away the greasy bottom in compost.
- Plastic containers that held food, like a peanut butter jar, should be as empty as possible.
- And while you don’t want to waste too much water cleaning your recyclables, a quick rinse will be appreciated by your local recycling facility! The cleaner an item is the more value it will have as a recycled material.
- Dirty plastic food containers
- Shredded paper
- Drinking glass, mirrors and ceramics
- Soiled paper, diapers
- Flexible plastics, like plastic wrap, juice pouches and garden hoses
- Plastic or metal clothes hangers – we recommend taking those back to your dry cleaners or donating them.
- What happens when you put the wrong items in the recycling bin?
- Contamination occurs when non-recyclable or dirty items are mixed in with clean recyclable content.
- Recyclables are worth a lot of money to the manufacturers that use them, but only when they are high quality!
- Generally speaking, our recyclables are taken to state-of the-art automated recycling centers called MRFs, which use magnets, eddy currents and optical scanners to sort and bale our pile of recyclables into usable materials.
- When the wrong thing – like a plastic bag or a garden hose – ends up in the system, it can really break things down and cause major delays.
- It contributes to the overall contamination of the recycling stream so the material is removed and landfilled.
- It can break the recycling equipment.
- I want to recycle more materials – why doesn’t the industry try to recycle those materials?
- Our industry continues to innovate so that there continue to be more options and access to recycling.
- Some items that can’t be put into the single-stream bin have alternative options.
- We also continue to advance the technology so that even more items can be recycled.