Ohio Residents are Being Asked to Sort Their Recyclables to Lower Contamination

Lisbon, Ohio residents are being asked to sort their recycling now to help cut down on contamination and keep prohibited items from recycling sites.

Previously, residents could group all their paper products, newspapers, cardboard, plastic bottles, aluminum, and metal cans all together in the same dumpster. However, due to sites looking like regular waste areas, problems with improper materials being left in recycling containers has caused the city to require residents to sort their materials.

“We don’t want our recyclables contaminated,” Carroll Columbiana Harrison Solid Waste District Director Missy Burchfield said.

Last year, the district received a grant of $40,000 from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency for education outreach, which went towards placing new labels on the recycling containers. The new labels have been placed on the containers in Carroll County and the work adding new labels in Columbiana County is almost complete.

“If everybody would recycle right, our costs wouldn’t be as high as they are,” Burchfield said.

The district is responsible for paying the processing centers for the materials from recycling sites, especially if the recyclables are contaminated. Before, the cost was $35 per ton, however, now the cost can range from $70 per ton at Ohio Valley to $93.75 per ton at Kimble.

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