While the Marshall County Landfill previously only accepted number one and two plastics, the landfill is now accepting number five plastics such as yogurt cups and butter tubs for recycling.

Members of the community would often ask Recycling Education Coordinator Jenn Clemann if number five plastics could be recycled, and up until recently, the answer was no. Number one and two plastics like single use water bottles and milk jugs were accepted, but number five plastics didn’t make the cut.

Clemann wanted to find a way to increase the amount of plastic recycled to keep it out of the landfill and improve the environment, so she talked with Mid-Iowa Workshops to see if they could help. MIW handles all commercial and residential recycling in Marshall County, and they agreed to accept the additional plastics to sell as “commingled plastics.”

Clemann and Landfill Manager Don Ballalatak said number five plastics have slowly become more popular over the years, and along with the surge in popularity, the amount of plastic that ended up at the landfill increased too.

“When this first started back in the mid or late ’80s, it was just number ones and number twos, because those were the ones that were kind of getting the most money from the recycling side of things,” Ballalatak said. “Nowadays, I mean you see fives are probably more popular than ones or twos, it seems like.”

Number five plastics are used the most in packaging, according to Clemann, and though those plastics weren’t accepted, they would often end up with the other recyclables anyway and have to be separated out from the rest of the load.

Recycling policies are different from city to city, so new residents often called in to check on recycling policies or recycled their items and hoped for the best. Now that the policy has changed, Clemann and Ballalatak want to encourage everyone to start recycling number five plastics along with their number ones and twos.

“Especially the people that are calling wanting to recycle that stuff, letting them know that that’s OK. They were looking at other avenues to try and get their stuff recycled, whether it was to take it to a different city or something like that. We had people that were really serious about their recycling,” Clemann said.

The change will create more work for MIW and their team, but Clemann said it’s something they are willing to do to help the environment. Though the policy changed on the number five plastics, Clemann wanted to emphasize that Styrofoam cannot be recycled, as that can be unclear.

“The biggest thing that cannot be recycled is your Styrofoam. It’s marked as a plastic and it has that recyclable symbol on it, but Styrofoam is not something that Mid-Iowa Workshop can take,” she said.

In addition to that, recyclables should be clean and dry before putting them in the bin, as the items are hand sorted by MIW team members.

“Rinse out your things. Run it through the dishwasher with the rest of your dishes just so that the food residue is cleaned off, because they are hand sorting these materials. So they’re not using machinery to sort it out, so for the benefit of the people that are doing the sorting, if it can be as clean as possible,” Clemann said.