Bill Brady expected the city recycled the cans, bottles and paper he set out in blue and yellow bins in front of his Boca Raton home.
Turns out that wasn’t the case.
And now the city will begin looking at ways to make sure all of the recyclables residents place on the curb actually get recycled.
NewsChannel 5 uncovered the city combines garbage and recyclables on a select number of narrow streets like Brady’s.
“I noticed they threw it all in the back of the truck and I said that’s not right, something is off here,” Brady remembered.
He said the city used to send a pick-up truck down his narrow stretch of NW 42nd Street to collect garbage and recycling separately.
But toward the end of 2016, that changed. One larger, more conventional garbage truck started coming down the road. And crews threw everything, recyclables and trash, into the truck.
“Recycling is the one thing I can do to help,” Brady said. “I don’t know if I save enough water or the other things, but the trash I can definitely do.”
All he needed was the city to do its part.
A city spokesperson said collecting the garbage and recycling with the pick-up truck proved to be too labor intensive. So the sanitation department decided to lump recyclables in with garbage in one truck on a small number of streets too narrow for the standard trash and recycling trucks to travel on.
Now the sanitation department will revisit how to make recycling possible on those narrow streets, possibly going back to the pick-up truck method.
“We got 8 billion people on the planet and there’s trash washing up on the beaches, we gotta do what we can. This is a little bit, but it helps,” Brady said, adding he’s recycled since the 1970’s.
The city spokesperson said the sanitation department does collect trash and recycling separately in the vast majority of the city. Our cameras saw different trucks making the round around town.
Trash and recyclables ends up at the Solid Waste Authority of Palm Beach County. It does not separate garbage from recyclables at its facilities. So it’s essential you separate your recyclables in the blue and yellow bins provided. It’s also critical that cities keep everything they collect from your curb in separate compartments.
For more information on what is and isn’t recyclable,click here.
