This Wednesday is a red Wednesday, which means trash and recycling pickup. Please make sure you pick up containers after pickup tomorrow night. They do not belong on the sidewalk after tomorrow night.

In recycling news, recycling company Newark Group VP Jonathan Gold offers views on single-stream collection and processing at a Congressional hearing.

“As an industry, we now collect two-thirds of all paper available for recycling and have increased the recycling rate for paper by 81 percent over the past 20 years,” said Gold in his testimony. “Despite this, there is still an enormous amount of paper that is not being collected and there remains quite a bit of misinformation in the data that suggests that more of what is collected for recycling is actually used in the creation of new products. That’s where the need for better information enters.”

In commenting about the practice of single-stream recycling, Gold remarked that recovered single-stream recyclables often contain materials that contaminate the usability of the paper. “The EPA does the best job they can at the moment in reporting on the tonnage of collected recyclables, but information isn’t really available to them regarding how much of that tonnage is later diverted to landfills. Better information on this could impact future decisions regarding single vs. dual stream recycling while leading to better solutions to maximize sustainability and continue the kind of economic job growth that results from new product development of recycled materials,” Gold stated.