ACMB is partnering with The City of San Antonio Solid Waste Management to provide this information to our readers. This is a sponsored post.
There’s something happening in our city that’s causing major problems with our recycling efforts as a whole and, pardon the pun, it kinda stinks! Dirty diapers are being found mixed in with composting or inside recycling bins—exactly where they don’t belong.
Has this ever happened to you? Your weekday starts like any other. If you’re lucky, you have been able to hit the snooze exactly twice before coaxing your tired body from bed and dragging it into your third grader’s room. It’s here that you’re expected to rouse a tired, cranky little boy into a pair of pants or his favorite, non-dirty basketball shorts. Leaving him to brush his teeth, you shift your attention to the rustling coming from the room beside his.
Hastening to your baby daughter’s bedroom door, you bound over the threshold as quickly as possible before her gentle waking-up sounds morph into shrill screams that will undoubtedly rouse both of your mammoth dogs quietly sleeping downstairs into a chorus of barking that your brain cannot endure at this early hour.
Baby in hand, you switch on the light as you make your way to the changing table, where your nose is assaulted by what could only be your husband’s forgotten chore: emptying the garbage pail. Quickly fastening a fresh diaper onto your now fully awake baby, you grab the offending contents of the pail and rush downstairs with your third grader close behind and your baby still cradled in your arms, now grabbing fistfuls of your hair and twisting it into uncomfortable knots.
Pausing to grab a cereal bar, you thrust your third grader’s lunch box and backpack into his small hands as you fumble, offending diaper trash bag still in hand, to toss flip flops onto your feet before he misses the bus. As you cross the street, you see your husband has brought your blue, green, and brown trash carts conveniently to the curb directly in front of your house. You happily fling the stinky diapers into the first cart and bound across the street just as the bus is pulling up.
One BIG problem: Instead of putting the dirty diapers into the brown cart where all trash goes, without even thinking you have flung the nose-offending diapers into the recycling cart. The same cart you carefully filled the night before with perfectly rinsed baby food jars and broken down boxes from your slight addiction to online shopping.
Your blue cart contents will now sadly be rejected at the recycling facility. Why? Once your cart is emptied and brought to the recycling center, the bag of diapers will slide down the conveyor belt where items are sorted, the belt will have to be stopped, a gloved worker will reach down and pluck out the offending diapers, AND the items surrounding them will be rendered contaminated and unable to be recycled. The last minute addition of stinky diapers has now made all of your hard work useless.
It’s frustrating to think that the time spent sorting and keeping recyclable items out of the trash is wasted because of one little mistake.
It’s not only inconvenient; it’s also a health hazard. Everything that’s in a diaper (ewww) could leak onto the conveyor belt inside of a recycling facility, making a smelly mess for someone else to clean up. And when someone else has to clean it up, it costs money. It costs the City over a million dollars in fines when diapers cause a contamination issue. It’s not like the big plastic suit guys from the movie E.T. swoop in and tent the whole place, but it does bring things to a screeching halt.
Fast forward to later that month and you’re opening your mail. If you’re serviced by the City of San Antonio Solid Waste Management Department, that $50 it cost the recycling company to remove a single diaper you placed in your recycling bin is now on your CPS bill. Believe me, the City is not getting rich off of your $50 or anyone else’s; the whole ruckus of putting things in the wrong bin costs the City a lot more than $50.
Mistakes happen, especially in the early morning hours of garbage pickup. The Solid Waste Management Department gets that and has a “forgiveness” program. For your first offense you can watch a short video, answer a few questions, and get a code to erase the fee.
Every day, diapers make it into the wrong cart. Whether a misstep or a mad dash to get the stink out of your house, putting them in the wrong cart starts a chain of events that ends with more trash going into the landfill, and who wants that? Recycling right has such a powerful impact on our communities. Do your part to be Cart Smart and help keep dirty diapers in the trash where they belong!
If you’re in doubt, throw it into your brown trash cart. For a full list of acceptable items, visit sarecycles.org.
