Recycling is Complicated and Dynamic
For years, we’ve been told we should recycle. And, most of us do the best that we can. But, as time goes on, the whole process keeps getting more complicated and the need for us to recycle properly is increasing. Since one of Carmel Care’s missions is Educational Outreach, we created this Carmel Recycle page and an associated Facebook page to encourage you to develop good recycling habits that will help Carmel-by-the-Sea to achieve its recycle goals.
By partnering with The City of Carmel, Keep America Beautiful, ourwaste management company Green Waste, and the Monterey Regional Waste Management District folks we hope to make it perfectly clear how to become an Expert Recycler. We’ll also show you what that strange looking structure above is and how it will change your life!
The Basics
We all have a Blue bin at home. We know we are supposed to put our recyclable materials in that bin every week. The contents of those bins are collected and taken to the Monterey County Waste Management District facility in Marina. All of that waste is then sent into an incredible complex building that is called MRF. It is a maze of conveyor belts and a myriad of clever sorting contraptions. We’ll tell you more about this later but, in the end, the waste is sorted into multiple waste streams and each type of recyclable waste is packaged into large, wire wrapped bundles and stacked in a warehouse. During this process, our bad recycle practices  can literally gum up the works, slow things things down and waste perfectly good recycle material. We want to help with this problem.
What can you and can’t you recycle?
The Monterey Regional Waste Management District has produced a really good website where you can learn how and what you can recycle. You can get to it at https://whatgoeswhere.info/.
Turns out you can recycle a lot of things. The other day we discovered that we can recycle our old electric toothbrushes in the Blue Bin. Since we are still working on this page let’s just give you a few important things:
What is the Yellow Bin for?
One of the best ways you can help Carmel meet its recycling goals is to start saving your table scraps or start saving more of them and put them in the Yellow Bins around town.
You can put any of your food scraps into a biobag, including nuts, bones, coffee grounds, you name it. This is where you should also put those pesky non-recyclable compostable cups and To-Go containers!
It becomes a good habit to see how fast you can fill your bag each week. We like to put twist the bag a few times, put a clip on it and put the bag in the freezer to keep it from getting a bit smelly. When the bag is full, tie it shut and drop it off at one of the bins: Vista Lobos parking lot (on the sidewalk by the right side of the meeting rooms), City Hall (behind the stone wall at the end of the left driveway) or at the Junipero side of the Farmer’s Market every Thursday. We are planning on sponsoring another bin at the North lot of Sunset Center once we get going.
So, all of that mix of compostable stuff is taken to the Regional Waste Management Facility and put into an anaerobic digester (that white and pink thing at the top of this page), heated to over 500 degrees and it is converted methane gas and compost. The gas powers their facility and the compost is mixed with other good stuff and sold at their retail outlet.
You can recycle certain kinds of metal, plastics and paper. You will have a blue bin for recyclable waste, a green bin for plant materials and a black bin for all other types of waste.
Food waste of all types should be placed in a Biobag and stored in your freezer until the bag is full. Then, take it to a location in town that has a public Yellow Bin.
Unless the restaurant you go to says otherwise, coffee cups are NOT recyclable because they usually have a coating of some sort. This is very unfortunate but is a fact of life at this point. The other problem is that coffee cups that are advertised as “Compostable” are NOT recyclable. Even though they are more expensive they must be recycled by placing them in the Compostable Food Waste stream, like the Yellow Bin. This just isn’t practical when you are Out and About.
