With recent inquiries from county residents on where to take their recyclables, Keep Blount Beautiful Executive Director Brittney Whipple wants them to know they have a place.

The Blount County Recycling Center, 331 Levi St., Maryville, accepts recycling and household hazardous waste from all Maryville, Alcoa and Blount County residents. The center is open from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. This service is free to all Blount County residents, she said.

Accepted items for recycling include steel and aluminum cans, rigid plastic, mixed paper, newspaper and corrugated cardboard. Cans, plastic and mixed paper do not need to be separated and all can go in the single-stream bin. There also are bins for newspapers and corrugated cardboard.

The Blount County Recycling Center’s household hazardous waste collection center takes items such as home improvement, automotive and lawn care products. Whipple asks that people view the list of accepted household hazardous waste items before dropping anything off.

Other accepted items include oil-based paint and 4-foot and 8-foot fluorescent bulbs. Latex-based paint will not be accepted and can be dried out and thrown away as normal.

A full list of accepted and unaccepted items can be found at KeepBlount

Beautiful.org under the Resources tab.

The recycling center opened in December 2017 and the household waste facility was added in December 2018. According to the Blount County Highway Department, an average 67,944 pounds of recyclables are collected per month for single stream, cardboard and newspaper, Whipple said. For household hazardous waste, the number is 1,618 pounds per month.

There is also another opportunity to drop off hard-to-recycle items at the annual Earth Day Recycling event, which will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 17, at First Baptist Church, Maryville. This is a free, drive-thru collection of hard-to-recycle items.

Items will be accepted by E-Cycle of Knoxville, Shred-It, Goodwill, My Frugal Home, the Maryville Lions Club and Keep Blount Beautiful.

These items include: audio/visual equipment, cable and wire, cellphones, computers, flat-screen TVs, printers/scanners, toner, small appliances, fabric, ribbon, mugs, candles, hard-cover Reader’s Digests, magnets, gardening supplies, jeans and board games.

“Each year we see that the need for Earth Day recycling remains constant, and we will continue to provide this service to Blount County,” Whipple said.

For more information, contact Keep Blount Beautiful at 865-681-4809 or keepblount@gmail.com or the Blount County Convenience Center at 865-982-4652.