The city of Wilton changed its recycling process within the last four weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Residents may have seen a huge difference in pick up and sorting, reflecting a safer work environment for city workers and residents alike.
Residents normally recycle plastic, paper, cardboard and tin products weekly. While weekly pick-up is still occurring, sorting of these items has came to a bit of a halt.
The COVID-19 virus can live on and be contracted through the touch of plastic, tin, cardboard, etc. To protect city workers, only visible cardboard is being sorted and recycled due to the fact that it holds the lowest risk of transfer during these times.
“Recycling as a whole has really come to a standstill in the U.S. market. With China no longer taking recyclables from the U.S., the market has dropped out. It’s not cost effective to collect and hand-sort the materials at this time and risk the employees contracting the virus,” stated Wilton City Administrator Chris Ball.
Ball encourages residents to continue putting out all recyclable items as usual, as they will still be picked up weekly. Instead of sorting through the recycling items, the city workers are disposing of them with the trash as of now — with the exception of visible cardboard.
“We don’t want people to lose the positive momentum with the recycling program. If we have them stop completely; we would lose the quality that our community has achieved,” Ball stated.
When the city travels to the Cedar County Transfer Station to dump city garbage, they are being charged a little bit more for drop off due to the addition of recycling items.
The city of Wilton used to recoup some of those expenses by collecting and selling recycled items, but with the market being down, there is no resale value for recycling, according to Ball.
“It does not make sense to spend time and effort, as well as risk, to recycle something that we can’t sell currently. Cardboard has the lowest risk and the only material that we can currently sell. The only recyclable that holds any value is corrugated cardboard (brown boxes), any cardboard with the slick coating doesn’t hold the same value,” Ball stated.
Along with taking these precautions, city workers are also wearing gloves and masks while working. The city of Wilton does not have a deep stockpile of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and welcomes any donations. If an individual would like to donate masks or gloves to the city workers, contact Robert VanDusen, Director of Public Works, by calling Wilton City Hall (563-732-2115).
Workers are also practicing good hand washing techniques, as well as social distancing. City workers are disinfecting all shared vehicles after use and utilizing assigned vehicles when available.