What to recycle: Hints for the perplexed

My story earlier this week about a $20 million high-tech sorting facility that Waste Management opened in Northeast Philadelphia took some avid recyclers by surprise.

In the story, company officials noted that so many plastic bags come in with all the other recyclables that they can't keep up with them. Workers attempt to pull them from the stream at the outset, sending them whooshing off via a vacuum system to a different part of the building. But still, so many get by that they clog the machinery. Twice a shift, workers have to shut down the automated line and clear the works.

So let us re-emphasize: Plastic bags should not be put in with the curbside recyclabes.

A lot of people do. A local recycling advocate walked down Spring Garden Street recently, checking the bins. Probably nine out of ten had recyclables packed INSIDE plastic bags. That's a no-no.

Plastic bags are, however, recyclable. Every grocery store I know of -- and quite a few other big box stores as well -- have bins at the front of the store for collecting plastic grocery bags, shopping bags, dry cleaner bags, newspaper bags, bread bags, produce bags....you get the gist.

Here's a list of some of the other unacceptable items that workers had to pull from the stream when I visited the Waste Management facility recently: a brick, part of a bowling ball, a printer cartridge, a plastic-coated wire dish drain. These things may be recyclable, but just not in a single-stream recycling facility.

And please allow a Waste Management vice president, Michael Taylor, to get on his soapbox for a moment: Some people think it's okay to put needles -- the medical equipment kind, not the sewing kind -- in the recycling bin. For whatever reason, people sometimes will put a whole bunch of them in a milk jugs.

When that happens, "people here face potential exposure" to all kinds of dangers, he noted. "We have to shut down the system and dispose of that material" in a biohazard container.

What CAN you recycle in Philadelphia? Tons.

Glass bottles and jars.  Plastic detergent bottles. Plastic water and soda bottles. Cans. Newspapers. Office paper. Empty aerosol cans and empty paint cans. Milk jugs. Yogurt containers. Cardboard. Philadelphia has a complete list here.

Another hint for avid Philadelphia recyclers: Lids from plastic bottles are recyclable, but please keep them on the bottles. When they are loose, the machinery can't always process them and they wind up scattered under machines and on the sorting facility floor.

For those in other areas, it's important to know who your trash hauler is and check with that company. Not all recycling programs are created equally because not all companies have the same equipment. Pretty much all take 1-7 plastics at this point. But some take No. 6 foam, and some don't.