News, events, and opinions in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania.

Imagine this scenario: A few hours ago, you picked up your favorite takeaway meal. It could be sushi from Misago, or Pho from Pho Yummy. No matter what it is, it is delicious and comes in a plastic container.

Now that you have finished eating, what do you use the container for? Reusing them may be the best option, but what is the second best — recycling, right?

At least for this reporter, the choice seemed obvious. But a recent reader question gave us an in-depth understanding of the rabbit hole of plastic recycling, and we are here to share what we learned.

This fall, residents of Lebanon County may have received a "Right to Recycling" flyer through a garbage collection service.

“We now know very well how much plastic is sent to landfills instead of our recycling bins,” wrote a LebTown reader who received this flyer. "We tried to find the reason for the change, but to no avail."

LebTown contacted the Greater Lebanese Waste Management Agency for more information and talked with the recycling coordinator Amy Mazzella di Bosco about the complex world of plastic recycling.

GLRA does not cooperate with recycling services and only provides recycling as a free consumer service, but Mazzella di Bosco is usually a knowledge base on the subject, with more than two decades of experience in this field.

The result is, yes, the flyer is correct, no, it may not be ideal, but this is the current economic reality, and it is important for all of us to understand why.

Don’t be too dramatic, but the simplest explanation is that US support for single-stream recycling has effectively increased recycling participation, but China is finally tired of the amount of garbage we let into the river and taking action to solve this problem-now on the roadside Affect actions in Lebanon County.

Throughout the supply chain, companies respond to China's actions with different speeds and different strategies. Some people praised policy changes as a catalyst for global waste management reform, although China’s policy, known as the “sword of national action,” is clearly both an economic lever and an ecological lever.

Nevertheless, the United States is currently in a position to prove that it can throw the right garbage into the right basket.

According to GLRA, the biggest misunderstanding of the public is that you need to put as many things as possible into the recycling bin. At this point, it is important to note that although GLRA is helping to promote this information, the guidelines are specific to roadside programs, and GLRA again does not operate or support these programs. In fact, in some cases, recycling centers operated by GLRA and the city can accept items other than those listed in the flyer above.

“We collect materials that are acceptable to the local market and generate the best market value to help maintain our free drop-off center,” Mazzella di Bosco said.

One of the most surprising facts shared by Mazzella di Bosco is that the existence of recycled code is not actually a key signal to know what is economically feasible (and therefore suitable) for recycling. At this point, GLRA will not collect #3 to #7 plastic bottles through its recycling program.

#1 PETE and #2 HDPE are commonly collected plastic types, usually bottles and kettles made using blow molding technology.

Rigid plastic cannot be recycled, so please continue to put plastic toys or plastic handbags in the trash.

This may be uncomfortable, but right here, now, you should probably reduce your recycling.

Do you have any other questions about recycling in Lebanon County? Use the contact form below to share them, we may write about them in future LebTown articles.

Questions about this story? Suggestions for future LebTown articles? Use the contact form below to contact our newsroom and we will try our best to respond to you.

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Davis Shaver is the publisher of LebTown. He grew up in Lebanon and currently lives outside of Hershey, Pennsylvania.

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