Capture all of your recyclables. Be sure that all of your recyclable containers and paper get recycled. No matter where you live, you can recycle all plastic bottles and jugs, aluminum and steel beverage and food cans, glass bottles and jars, newspaper, corrugated cardboard and mixed paper.

If you read a magazine while you wait for your child at practice, take the magazine home and put it into your recycling bin. (Or, share it with a friend and ask her to recycle it after she reads it.) If you take a disposable water bottle with you on a bike ride, take it home to recycle it afterward. That goes for sports drink and soft drink bottles, too! (Of course, filling your own reusable and washable bottle is even better.)

Prepare your recyclables correctly. Bottles, jars and cans should be thoroughly emptied and rinsed. Remove caps, lids, and pumps and discard them with your trash. Flatten plastic and metal containers whenever possible.

Make sure that paper products are clean and dry. Flatten boxes. Don�t recycle dirty paper products. If you spilled cereal on the newspaper or have a greasy pizza box, those paper products will have to hit the trash.

Do not mix non-recyclables or trash with your recycling. Your recycler only wants the materials requested. Be sure you know which recyclables are accepted where so that you only place the proper items into bins or containers. When you put other materials into the bins, they are considered "contaminants.� Common contaminants include trash, non-recyclable plastics (tubs, toys, and clamshells), food residue, and caps and lids on bottles and jars. Sometimes these contaminants ruin a load of recyclables; other times they have to be sorted out by hand. Either way, they make recycling more difficult and more expensive, while causing the recyclables to be less valuable to the factories that use them to manufacture new products. Remove and discard caps and lids before you recycle plastic and glass containers!

Place recyclables into the proper bins and containers.

Be sure you know where to recycle:

• In the towns of Woodfin and Weaverville and in the City of Asheville, you can recycle at the curb. You can put all of your recyclables together into the blue recycling bags.
• If you live in unincorporated Buncombe County and have trash collection service provided by GDS, you can also recycle curbside using clear blue recycling bags.
• Other Buncombe County residents can use the four drop-off centers:
  • West Asheville Earth Fare
  • Transfer Station
  • Buncombe County Landfill
  • Merrimon Avenue behind Asheville Pizza and Brewery.
  Recycling is still a great idea! Even during tough economic times, recycling makes a lot of sense. Recycling typically costs a resident less than disposal, reduces pollution, especially during the manufacture of new products, and it conserves energy.

  (Images provided by Buncombe County.)

  
  
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