New Bedford Guide Your Guide to New Bedford and South Coast, MA
Did you know that plastic bags placed into a recycling bin can wrap around machinery at a recycling sorting facility and cause them to malfunction or break?
The danger for the recycling facility is not just to loose shopping bags, but to bagged recyclables. Often residents will use a shopping bag to package up loose recyclables like soda bottles & cans, used yogurt containers, paper, milk cartons, etc. or sort them, such as keeping aluminum with aluminum, paper with parer and glass with glass. However, this still causes a problem at the sorting facility and New Bedford Recycling ask that residents leave their recyclables loose.
If you would like to recycle clean and dry plastic bags, they can be returned to the grocery store. A bin marked “Plastic Bags” is generally found in the entrance lobby. These bags are turned into items like plastic lumber.
Also helpful is emptying and rinsing containers and leaving them “as is,” in other words not flattening or crushing them.
For more information, please call the District Recycling Office at (508) 979-1493.
