{"id":62211,"date":"2018-06-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-06-12T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/newsroom\/2018\/06\/12\/livegreen-commercial-recycling-changes\/"},"modified":"2022-09-02T17:17:34","modified_gmt":"2022-09-02T22:17:34","slug":"livegreen-commercial-recycling-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/newsroom\/2018\/06\/12\/livegreen-commercial-recycling-changes\/","title":{"rendered":"LiveGreen: Commercial recycling changes"},"content":{"rendered":"

You may have heard that FirstStar Fiber, Omaha’s materials recovery facility, made changes<\/a> to its commercial recycling processes. As of June 1, they are no longer accepting “single-stream” recycling (all recyclables mixed together) from commercial customers.<\/p>\n

To be clear, this will not change any aspect of residential\/curbside recycling, it is only affecting commercial\/businesses.<\/p>\n

This change is largely due to the level of contamination in the single-stream containers. Contamination in recycling can be items that are not recyclable (Styrofoam) or items that are recyclable, but are dirty, usually with food and liquid (greasy pizza box). Food contamination also can lead to issues for the people doing the sorting, as it can attract bugs\/vermin. <\/p>\n

A little contamination can be dealt with, but a large amount usually means the load gets taken to the landfill. Contamination can be caused by a lack of education or laziness, but can also be by people who place an item in a bin and just hope if it gets to the recycling place they’ll figure out how to recycle it. <\/p>\n

Nope. I understand the wish and the hope, but this action ultimately means fewer items are being recycled.<\/p>\n

What does this mean for the medical center?<\/p>\n

Right now, it does not affect us. We already are sorting our recyclables into three streams — paper, cardboard, mixed plastic and metal. Because of this we already are in compliance but are lucky — other businesses had less than a month’s notice, which sadly means they are scrambling to figure out what to do and a lot of recyclables are probably going to go to the landfill.<\/p>\n

Even though our process isn’t currently changing, we want to make sure everything that goes in a recycling container is recycled and that we do not have a contamination problem. <\/p>\n

Please:<\/p>\n