Last year, the SWCC held a forum about plastic and Chris Mitchell, Walton County's Public Information Officer was available to answer questions about the recycling program.
Using the trailers is the best way to ensure that more recyclables are recovered. They found that too many people were using the free blue bags as regular garbage bags.
Walton County also took a survey asking people if they would be willing to pay an extra $5 a month for recycling. The result was a unanimous "no". Then they came up with the idea of using one garbage day to pick up recyclables. Unfortunately, that didn't bode well with rental property, which generate a tremendous amount of garbage throughout the week.
Cardboard IS recyclable at the trailers. The reason they say "No cardboard" is because they don't want people throwing in boxes that aren't broken down. That wastes space and therefore gas. Chris said it was perfectly acceptable to put in cardboard, just break it down first. Apparently, most people don't follow the rules.
Lastly, there are a few other reasons it's more complicated to recycle in Walton County. Our county waste facility is not equipped to wash contaminated recyclables. This would require more money for a waste water treatment facility and required permits for dumping treated waste water. All of Walton County only has about 50,000 full-time residents. Except for some developments in South Walton, residents are spread out over the land making it more costly and time consuming to collect the garbage. We're still considered very rural and this is also true when companies buy the recyclables. Our recyclables will sit for months on site while the county waits for a buyer. All the while, the recyclables are mounting every day and the waste facility has to store them.
So, when people wonder why Walton County is so backwards with the recycling, there's a reason for it. We're a perfect example of how some things that work for an urban environment, just don't work every where.
The best thing we can do is be more conscious about what we buy and how it's packaged.
Thanks for the info!