My View – March 2018 – Guest Column – Rogue Disposal & Recycling

Editor’s Note: As Publisher of the Jacksonville Review, I am committed to bringing my readers news stories that impact our quality of life. In my tenure, I can think of no matter that’s more critical than the following Guest Column by our friends at Rogue Disposal and Recycling. Thank you for reading and sharing this news with your friends and helping Our Small Town with Big Atmosphere!

To our friends and neighbors in Jacksonville: In response to the increasingly worrisome state of global recycling markets, we at Rogue Disposal & Recycling are rethinking our curbside recycling program. Put simply, we need to focus our efforts on collecting only those materials we know we can find markets for (preferably domestic), and we need your help in making these changes.

As of Monday, March 5th, we will be hitting the reset button on our curbside recycling program. We’ll be asking our customers to limit what they put in their recycling carts to the following items: Corrugated Cardboard (the kind with the wavy middle layer), Tin and Aluminum Cans, Newspaper (including inserts and ads), and Plastic Milk Jug Style Containers (gallon and half gallon sizes, clear or white, no lids). This revised list of accepted items is based on input from various Pacific Northwest recycling processors that we work with. We know that whatever mix we collect needs to be made up of materials that are easy to describe and communicate to customers, which will ultimately lead to significantly reduced contamination.

We are dedicated to making sure that the recyclable materials we collect are marketable, will actually be recycled, and not end up in a landfill in some other part of the world. We see this as a long term challenge, requiring commitment to long term solutions. Changing curbside programs is not easy for anyone, and we recognize that it will require thoughtful re-education of our customers about contamination, and about materials that are no longer considered “recyclable.”

You may have already received our new curbside recycling education materials, and our hope is that the new guidelines will be easy to understand. Our goal is to enable our customers to recycle items for which there are sustainable, accessible, and affordable markets—now and into the future.

Thank you for your business, and for your willingness to be a part of the solution.

Sincerely,

Laura Leebrick and Garry Penning

Rogue Disposal & Recycling, Inc.