Figuring out which materials can be recycled and which should be thrown away is not always easy. To help county residents make those decisions, Warren County Department of Public Works has unveiled a new online tool that will take a lot of the guessing out of the process for residents who want to do the right thing for the environment.
Warren County has added a new tool known as “Waste Wizard” to the county website, an easy-to-use search bar that will quickly give residents answers about whether a material can be recycled or tossed.
Metal cans? Recycle them, label and all.
Plastic straws? Throw them away.
Pizza box? That one can be more complicated, but they don’t get recycled if they are greasy. Waste Wizard outlines the options.
Waste Wizard is a program brought to Warren County through the efforts Thomas Szabo, Warren County’s new Solid Waste and Recycling Compliance Coordinator, and Warren County Planning Department. Szabo was hired last year in part to improve the county’s recycling efforts, while also working with waste haulers to ensure they are following applicable statutes.
“The staff at transfer stations get a lot of questions about recycling, and we understand it can be confusing given the different types of materials that are out there,” Szabo explained. “It’s very important to keep garbage out of the recycling stream, and Waste Wizard will help us do that.”
Keeping materials out of the recycling stream that don’t belong there improves the recyclability of the materials that are collected, by limiting contamination that can affect their re-use.
The Waste Wizard tool can be found on the “Solid Waste and Recycling” page on the county website.