Sylvan Lake Newsbyte

Keep it simple. Keep it clean.
Empty, rinse, recycle, repeat 
for all plastics, glass and metal.

• If you’re recycle something not cleaned, the whole truck of recycles is ruined and ends up in the landfill.
• Wire hangers are NOT recyclable.
• Breakdown and flatten all cardboard.
• Make sure to put all recyclables in a recycling bin – NOT BAGS!  It's time to stop lining your recycling bin with trash bags. 

Here are more offenders to help keep your recyclables out the landfill:

• Your daily caffeine habit is NOT very earth-friendly after all. The only thing that’s recyclable on a coffee cup is the Kraft sleeve. 
• Separate lids from their containers - separate a glass base and a metal lid and plastic lid on an aluminum coffee can.
• Any paper product smaller than a sticky note is not recyclable. This includes receipts as they are a glossy-coated thermal paper.
• Don't recycle your coffee pods.

Before you recycle (or toss), ask yourself if you can somehow reuse the item you’re thinking about throwing in your recycling (or trash) bin. If you can, then you’ve done even better – you’re reusing your item, thereby creating no additional waste or energy use.

An example of something that we reuse are tennis balls – we take them to the local YMCA and donate them to use on strollers or walkers for the elderly or handicapped. That not only prevents them from having to buy new tennis balls, but keeps our old tennis balls from ending up in a landfill.