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Keri Marrs Barron picked up a dehumidifier, a plastic foam bucket, a plant container, and other non-recyclable items outside of nine large recycling bins in the Strack & Van Til grocery store parking lot in Chesterton.

The Executive Director of the Porter County Recycling and Waste Reduction District, the Hobart Department of Public Works and other recyclable handlers found that the conditions in the garbage collection bins and curbside collection bins were equally bad, so much so that they caused major interruptions and increased at the end of the sorting The pollution costs, wages and fuel costs of counties and communities have been reduced.

"Pollution has always been a real problem, but it has increased this year," said Erika Mihalek, a spokesperson for the Porter County agency.

Hobart’s director of public works, Kelly Smith, said at a recent city council meeting: “Almost half of the trash cans are either dirty or unrecyclable.”

In fact, the situation has become so bad that some communities and institutions are taking active actions-from letting offenders clean the trash from their trash cans to completely taking the trash cans from repeat offenders, to They imposed huge fines.

The National Waste and Recycling Association estimates that nearly a quarter of the items placed in recycling bins cannot actually be recycled through roadside programs.

"Plastic food bags are the number one pollutant. They need to be brought back to the grocery store that accepts them," Doug Rosenbaum, general manager of Republic Services Waste and Recyclable Transporter, said at a recent Hobart City Council meeting.

Marrs Barron said that plastic bags would be wrapped around machines used to sort recyclable products.

"A video from Homewood Disposal shows that during an 8-hour shift, the machine had to stop and the workers took out all the entangled bags," Marrs Barron said.

Other non-compliant items left in the trash can include dirty paper plates, trash, napkins and plastic tableware.

Marrs Barron said that the only items that should be put in the recycling bin are aluminum cans, tin cans and metal cans; plastic bottles, bathtubs and kettles; glass bottles and cans; milk, juice, broth and other cartons; newspapers, catalogs, phone books And paper bags; office paper, folders, and envelopes; cardboard boxes, cereal, paper towels, and frozen food boxes; squashed cardboard boxes; and junk mail, glossy paper, and magazines.

They should be empty and clean and rinsed gently.

"Bottles, bathtubs and kettles-if it fits that shape and has a 1-7 symbol on it, it can go into the recycling bin," Marrs Barron said.

Smith said that plastic shopping bags are also Hobart's biggest problem, followed by food waste and plastic foam, large plastic toys, garden hoses and plastic products.

She showed samples of items taken from some recycled containers, including clothes, CDs, dirty pizza boxes, dog beds and yard waste.

"We need to get back on track and recycle properly," Smith said.

She said that due to increased costs, recycling in the city is no longer as free as in the past.

In order to solve this problem, Smith said that the city will start recycling every week instead of every other week, hoping to better solve this problem.

The city will also mark cans left on the side of the road that contain contaminants, telling residents what items are unacceptable. The container will remain on site for residents to make corrections.

She said that the second violation may result in the loss of the recycling container.

In Porter County, Marrs Barron said that the first crime was to educate offenders to do and not to do recycling locally. Repeated offenders may face fines of up to $1,000.

She said that some items placed in trash cans and roadside trash cans are recyclable; they just cannot be placed in those trash cans.

She said, for example, the dehumidifier will be taken to Metro Recycling to extract Freon.

"There are many places where you can dispose of everyday items such as batteries and electronics," Mihalek said.

Another problem for the Porter County agency is that people dump items out of trash cans at six delivery points in the county—regardless of whether they are recyclable or not.

Marrs Barron and assistant Don Groff went to the scene to clean up.

"We are tenants of Strack & Van Til. We want to be good tenants," said Marrs Barron.

They will never know who the criminal who left the trash can is. Grove said they usually come at night.

Not everyone who uses the drop-off service will cause problems.

For example, John Hartson has just moved back to the area and is loading a clean, folded mobile box into a trash can, watching Mars Barron, Mihalek, and Grove.

"I can't believe how great this place is. The service is incredible," Hutson said. "We are going back, there are boxes everywhere. This is an easy place to take them, not the roadside."

Karen Caffarini is a freelance journalist for Post-Tribune.