Recycling in Williamsburg Settlement
January 16 2023
As each year around 5% of our homes have new owners not all of them will be familiar with the recycling program that Texas Pride Disposal, our trash service contractor, provides. A refresher for longer term residents may also be useful!
The guide as to what is and is not recyclable and the way recyclable materials should be put out for collection is spelled out on the Trash and Recycling page of our website at the top of which is a link to the recycling information.
A question has been raised recently on whether the rules should be changed regarding the listing of soiled pizza boxes as being unacceptable for recycling. I raised this with the Texas Pride Disposal owner, who responded that the quality requirements of the material that will be accepted is dictated by the company that purchases and processes the recycling loads from them. If there is just a very small amount of grease on a pizza box it will probably be accepted. But the acceptable amount is hard to judge, which is where the slogan, 'when in doubt, throw it out' comes from and why Texas Pride Disposal prefers to keep them on the unacceptable list.
Another issue that causes items in the recycle load to be rejected by the recycling processor is when otherwise recyclable items have been loaded into plastic garbage bags. For safety and efficiency reasons the processor does not open the bags, so unless a plastic bag breaks open in the truck it will be pulled out as contamination and sent to landfill. Paper bags would be fine, but the better approach would be to just put the unbagged items into a larger recycling container if the small ones in general use will not hold enough.
Residents are encouraged to take advantage of the recycling program to reduce the amount of material that would otherwise go to the landfills and following the published guidelines will maximize the benefit of this program.
