We all know that recycling is good for the environment but what a lot of people don't know is what exactly is recyclable.
"I honestly haven't noticed them."
But by next spring, you'll be noticing them a lot more. Over the next year, the city's solid waste division will provide more than 80,000 homes with a blue recycling bin, free of charge.
But now the question is, what exactly can you put into your recycling bins? "Just keep in mind bottles, cans, any kind of paper product is fine. Cardboard is great. Glass is fine. Plastic is fine, now when we talk about plastic we're talking about rigid plastic, hard plastic. Not plastic bags, not styrofoam, we certainly don't want trash as in food or food scraps in the recycling. Someone's going to go through that, we want to make that thing healthy for them. They're going to go through that and sort out the cans from the bottles, from the paper and we don't want to have trash in there," says Sal Moretti with the city of Bakersfield.
Most people think you can only recycle bottles and cans, but it's also other household items like macaroni and cheese boxes, or water containers, that no longer have to go into a landfill.
Blue bin pick up will be every other week of the month. And with all the items that can be recycled in your home, you'll find a lot more room for waste in your trash. "I know that in my trash I put a lot of things that can would probably go into that blue bin that shouldn't be going into the landfill. It should be separated. Newspapers and stuff though I just throw them in my trash so those will be better off being recycled," says Ken Barnes, Bakersfield resident.
By having more knowledge about what can and cannot be tossed into the blue bins, the city hopes more people will participate. "Imagine a day where we use less and less trash because we've just gotten so good at recycling there might be some future benefits that we haven't even thought of yet when the need for the trash cart reduces significantly," adds Moretti.
