SPOKANE -- A lot of Spokane's residents complain about the area's limited curbside recycling program, but starting Wednesday, they've expanded their offerings.
In this 2 on Your Side report, we try and clear up some of the confusion about what the Spokane Regional Solid Waste System does and doesn't collect curbside and why.
"It's difficult sometimes to know what to put out and what to keep," says Jen, a local woman who told us she considers herself a conscientious recycler. She uses her curbside bin for only those things she believes aren't ready to go to a garbage grave.
"I abide by 1's and 2's go out and everything else is garbage but I noticed that several things were coming back," she says.
Brian Nolan works on the front lines of the City of Spokane's Solid Waste Department and sees examples of his customers' confusion every day.
"They think that if it has a recycling emblem on it that we take it," he says.
And there's plenty of garbage without the recycling symbol that ends up in the bin too. For example -- flip flops? Not recyclable. Brian estimates more than 75% of residents on his route stuff some of the wrong things into recycle bins.
The trouble is it can be just plain difficult to understand the recycling rules.
Ann Murphy is in charge of knowing the ins and out of all those rules. She's the Education Coordinator at Spokane Regional Solid Waste.
For example, why aren't those containers that hold cottage cheese and yogurt recyclable? Because it doesn't follow one of the rules -- the neck-is-smaller-than-the-base rule. Ann says to think of recycling plastics like sorting apples.
"But they're different varieties of apples and maybe you don't want the apple you want in your apple pie to be in your cider," she says.
Those clam-shell containers so many things come in -- those are bad apples. Yogurt containers and cottage cheese containers -- bad apples.
So why do they take those and so many other recyclables in places like Portland and Seattle? It's a question Ann is asked all the time.
"It's the fact that those communities are along the I-5 corridor, they're closer to where there are more processing facilities; they're also closer to shipping," says Ann.
Ann calls recyclables a commodity, and if you can't get your goods, in this case, certain recyclables, to market in a way that makes sense economically and environmentally, then it doesn't make sense to recycle them.
"It doesn't make a lot of sense to spend more in fuel taking something somewhere," says Ann.
So Spokane County has to keep many of its recyclables closer to home. The first stop is places like Pacific Steel and Recycling, where they sort and then send different materials to many different markets
And starting Wednesday, we can all recycle more items. Spokane Regional Solid Waste is now accepting colored-code 1 and 2 plastic jars and bottles because they've found a market that makes sense. So, all those white milk jugs are now good to go in your curbside bin.
As are food scraps and food-soiled paper, like pizza boxes. Those ones go in the green yard waste bin.
They are steps forward that promise to take a good chunk out of the county's raging sea of garbage.
Things like cereal and cracker boxes, juice and milk boxes and junk mail are not recyclable curbside in Spokane County because there is such a limited market for them, meaning there aren't enough places out there willing to take them and turn them into recycled-content products.
And these markets ebb and flow. In fact, the county is actually having to stockpile all of the glass it's collecting right now because that market dried up; they don't have anyone who will take it.
However, you are still encouraged to recycle your glass while they look for someone who can use it.
