News & Media

Town completes recycling audits on Green Route

This week the Town conducted its fourth recycling audit, this time along the Green Route.

The most common recycling contaminants we found were plastic bags and overwrap, other flexible plastic packaging and bagged items.

The first picture shows the amount of plastic bags and overwrap and flexible plastic packaging we found at just one house. This amount could easily contaminate all other recyclable material and mean all items end up at the landfill. Nobody wants that to happen!

Blue recycling bags, despite product marketing, are not an exception to the no bagging rule. Please do not bag your recycling items using these bags. Instead, pick up yellow reusable bags at City Hall or the Frank Jameson Community Centre.

Let’s go over where the recycling contaminants we found on the Green Route belong...

• Plastic bags and overwrap and other flexible plastic packaging - Peerless Road Recycling Centre (10830 Westdowne Rd) or Junction Bottle Depot (149 Oyster Bay Dr.)
• Styrofoam - Peerless Road Recycling Centre or Junction Bottle Depot. Check out an earlier post by the Town on Styrofoam for more information about the items.
• Bagged items - unbag items and leave loose in a bin or yellow reusable recycling bag.

Thanks Ladysmith for working hard to reduce our recycling contamination rate!

To view the results from previous recycling audits and to learn more about recycling contamination, visit the Town of Ladysmith website.