"Talkin'' Trash - Blog - Division of Solid Waste Services

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

What kinds of wrapping paper are recyclable?

From our mailbag:

What kinds of wrapping paper are recyclable? I specifically wonder about the shiny, metallic paper that my wife likes.

Thanks for your timely question, M.! Metallic and foil papers do create a fine-looking gift presentation! But, as much as I hate to introduce any domestic discontent, please tell your wife (gently!) that we cannot accept foil- or plastic-coated papers for recycling. We accept all other types of gift wrap paper (minus the bows and ribbons!).

In a related question, B. asked:

Can you tell me what can be done with tissue paper?

Sure! That can go into your wheeled cart or paper recycling bundle, right along with the rest of your recyclable paper.

A note about the photo: that roll of gift wrap is labeled "polywrap". It looks like foil paper but... it's actually a thin plastic film. If you have or receive any of this type of wrap, please dispose of it as trash once you are finished using (and reusing) it; we cannot accept plastic films in our recycling program.

--posted by Susanne

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CATEGORIES: Mailbag , Paper , Plastic , Recycling
POSTED: 9:44:00 AM |

Friday, December 12, 2008

When it snows... watch for our announcements

Excited about last night's Winter Storm Watch, my boys were ready. They had their snow pants out, and their boots lined up.

I was ready, too: I had a laptop and cell phone, fully charged and standing by.

As we saw this morning, neither set of preparations was called into play. Still, it was good practice for a future weekday morning on which snow blankets the ground, or ice makes streets too slippery for recycling and trash collection vehicles.

If County-provided recycling or trash collection needed to be delayed or suspended due to weather on such a morning, I'd press that laptop into service as soon as I received the phone call to let me know that there was a collections change. I would update our website, and send a note to our announcement subscribers. You can receive notifications as email, a text message, or as an RSS feed.

Are you on our subscriber list? If not, I invite you to join our Collection Change notification list (and any of the other lists we offer).