Recycling prices on the rise in Monterey

Recycling prices are about to go up in Monterey.

City officials decided on the price hike at a council meeting Tuesday.

The rise in price is due to a variety of factors, but a lot of it comes down to how you recycle. Many people are pretty good when it comes to recycling, but nobody is perfect. And the mistakes you make when it comes to it, could cost you.

At one of Monterey’s largest recycling centers you can find paper and plastics everywhere. All of the recycled goods that comes into the center, has to get sorted. Some gets sorted by hand, others machine. In the end, it gets packed into bales.

As you can imagine,it’s a complicated process. And the mistakes you make when recycling only make it worse. Ted Terrasas with the City says, “Just because it’s plastic, doesn’t mean it’s recyclable.”

Things getting tossed into those recycling cans all the time, which shouldn’t be there. That makes the disposal center spend

more of their time and money filtering out what can’t be recycled. “So it does directly impact pretty much every rate payer in the city. If they’ve got to sort it out, and end up disposing of it, that’s all added costs,” says Ted.

Simply recycling the right materials isn’t enough. It needs to be clean. That means emptying half-filled soda cans and scraping away scraps of food from materials. There are two reasons for this. “One, the container itself has to be empty for it to be recyclable. But in the process of being collected and processed, a lot of those liquids will drain out into the papers and the fibers,” says Tom Parola with the disposal service.

To figure out what is and isn’t recyclable, download the City’s “What Goes Where” app… cause in the end, it’ll save you money.