RecyclingMonster - West Central Iowa Solid Waste is urging rural residents in the communities they serve to stop throwing garbage into recycling trailers or risk losing them. According to Director, Mary Wittry, these trailers can be found in almost every town in Carroll, Crawford, Guthrie and Shelby Counties and several in Audubon and Calhoun Counties. The trailers were first implemented starting in the early 1990s to expand access to recycling programs. Wittry says they have seen a notable increase of people throwing regular garbage into these bins recently.
She adds this is a widespread problem seen at nearly all their collection sites. For the materials inside the trailers to be recycled, the contaminated items must be sorted manually before they can be processed. This requires a substantial amount of time and effort by employees at the landfill and puts the future of their recycling program at risk.
The rural recycling program is funded through the end of Fiscal Year (FY) 2021, but Wittry stresses that funding may not be renewed if the problem continues. She says it is not feasible for them to monitor all the drop-off locations, so they are limited on what they can do to stop people from throwing trash in the trailers.
Depositing trash into recycling trailers is a form of illegal dumping, and violators can face substantial fines if caught. A copy of the recycling guidelines and contact information for West Central Iowa Solid Waste can be found included with this story on our website.
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