Wisconsin community limits plastics accepted for recycling

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La Crosse, Wisconsin-based Harter’s Quick Clean-Up and the city of La Crosse have announced they are adjusting recycling rules for city residents after a Board of Public Works’ decision Aug. 20 that allowed the company to stop taking three types of plastic.

According to an article in the La Crosse Tribune, Harter’s Quick Clean-Up will no longer accept Nos. 3 (polyvinyl chloride, or PVC), 6 (polystyrene, or PS) and 7 (polycarbonate and other) plastics. Mathias Harter, general manager of Harter’s Green Circle Recycling LLC, a subsidiary of Harter’s Quick Clean-Up that operates a single-stream material recovery facility (MRF), made the request.

The newspaper quotes Harter as saying, “There’s just nothing to do with them when we recycle them. When we take them in our recycling plant, we can’t ship them anywhere and have someone reuse them, so currently they go to the waste-energy facility.”

The plastics in question comprise less than one-half of 1 percent of the company’s incoming material stream, Harter says in the article.

By eliminating these plastics from the recycling bin, Harter’s Green Circle Recycling expects lower costs and increased efficiencies, which will help it address changing markets owing to China’s recent ban on imported plastic scrap, the La Crosse Tribune reports.

An annual mailer to users of the recycling service will note the changes, Mathias Harter told the newspaper.