County hopes that improvements will entice more residents and businesses to recycle which will reduce the cost of landfill operations and improve the environment
LEONARDTOWN, Md. - Recycling just got easier for St. Mary’s County residents. The Board of County Commissioners and the Department of Public Works and Transportation announced today that they are moving to Single Stream Recycling. Residents will no longer need to sort their recyclable items into separate containers. Newspaper, magazines, catalogs, cereal boxes, mixed paper (printer paper, copier paper, mail, etc.) phone books, plastics, glass, aluminum, and steel containers can all be mixed into the same recycling bins at the six convenience centers located throughout the county.
"The development of this program represents a major step forward in our long term waste resource management strategy," says George Erichsen, Director of the Department of Public Works & Transportation. “In partnering with Waste Management, residents will no longer need to sort materials and manage multiple recycling containers at home - all you need is a single container! Old corrugated cardboard will continue to be sorted separately, but we are expanding our plastic recycling program to include #3 thru #7 plastics (narrow & screw top containers) in addition to #1 & #2 that we already collect.”
The County says they are making this change to make it more convenient for residents and businesses to recycle larger quantities of materials, improve the County’s recycling rate, and reduce the amount of material the County has to place into landfills.
Once recyclable items are collected, they are transported to the largest single stream recycling facility in the nation, located in Elkridge, Maryland. The facility is equipped with the state of the art sorting technology that separates the recyclable materials for processing.