Recycle! Recycle! Recycle! The April Push for Plastic Recycling

It’s the second of the “Big Four” recyclable materials. - #1 and #2 Plastic - “Anything with a neck” recycling that is being targeted in an intensive, region-wide push in April in Lincoln County and Mescalero. The four materials to be targeted during the month of April are corrugated cardboard; #1 and #2 plastic; newspaper; and clean, empty aluminum cans. Recycling these items creates raw materials that are transported out of the County and sold in southwestern industrial material markets. Material recycling also creates new local jobs, and saves $500 per landfill trip – the cost of transporting and dumping these materials in the Otero-Lincoln Regional Landfill south of Alamogordo. Recycling and selling the ‘big four’ materials, creates downward pressure on solid waste costs, and, ultimately, your solid waste bill.

Identification of these #1 and #2 plastic is easy! Turn the container over and look for the recycling triangle with a 1 or 2 molded or imprinted on the bottom of the container. Any other numbered plastic items should be discarded in the trash.

All other grades of plastic [3 – 7], including food and medicine packaging will not be accepted by material manufacturers to whom the recycled plastic is sold, and may be discarded in the regular trash.

Other types of plastic that cannot be recycled [no market for the material] includes:

Styrofoam of any kind

Plastic wrap of any kind

Plastic shopping bags can be recycled at the Smokey’s Country Market (Capitan) and at local thrift shops

Plastic containers with oil, grease, or food products

Restaurant cooking oil plastic containers

What can you do to push the recycling of plastic?

Empty out all liquids from plastic containers

Encourage businesses, convenience stores, and other large consumers of plastic beverage bottles to recycle

Throw the lid in the trash and transport clean, empty plastic bottles to the nearest blue recycling dumpster

For more information on recycling “the Big Four”, contact the Solid Waste Authority office at 378-4697; toll free at 1-877-548-8772; email at gswa@greentreeswa.org; or on Twitter.