A Reboot for Recycling

ILLUSTRATION BY RYAN SNOOK

Recyclers, rejoice! Two recent developments on the area’s green team mean we all can now recycle more effectively.

First, Rumpke Waste & Recycling joined the Hefty ReNew Program in November and began collecting a whole slew of recyclables it had never accepted before at the curb. And right around the same time, nonprofit Cincinnati Recycling & Reuse Hub in Lower Price Hill began taking No. 1 plastics. Local recyclers previously wouldn’t accept No. 1 items (like Solo cups and clear clam-shell containers that hold fruits and vegetables).

As a result, many more everyday items that take hundreds if not thousands of years to decompose in our landfills can now be recycled responsibly in the region, including plastic silverware and to-go foam containers. “It really is a big deal,” says Carrie Harms, warehouse director at the Cincinnati Recycling & Reuse Hub. “There’s nothing easy about recycling if you’re doing it right. But these changes do make things a little easier.”

In 2022, Greater Cincinnati recycled 216 million pounds of materials through Rumpke. And from April 2021 through September 2023, the Hub recycled 600,000 pounds. Just think about how much more of our waste could be repurposed.

The Hefty ReNew Program is now available to residential and commercial Rumpke customers in Ohio’s Butler, Clermont, Hamilton, and Warren counties; Kentucky’s Boone, Kenton, and Campbell counties; and Indiana’s Dearborn County. It differs from how Rumpke customers had been preparing items for the curb, so pay attention.

First, you need to buy orange Hefty ReNew trash bags. The bags retail for less than $10 for a box of 20 and are available at Kroger stores, and you can request a free sample online. Fill them with any assortment of the program’s accepted items, which must be clean, dry, and free of any foil lining. Roughly 30 everyday items qualify: salad and frozen fruit bags, plastic wrap, dry and wet disposable cleaning cloths, bubble wrap, foam peanuts, plastic straws, colored plastic cups, and more. Find the full list here.

When the orange bag is full, tie it up and toss it into your curbside recycling bin or a recycling drop box near you. All other recyclables accepted by Rumpke—like paper, cardboard, other plastics, and aluminum—should continue to be placed loose in your can as before.

For those who find the bags cost prohibitive, all of the Hefty ReNew program items can be recycled for free through the Recycling & Reuse Hub, says Harms. Bring them to the warehouse at 911 Evans Street noon–6 p.m. on Thursdays and 10 a.m.–2 p.m. on Saturdays. For a full list of accepted items, many taken for free and others for a small disposal fee, check out cincinnatirecyclingandreusehub.org.

Hub staff and volunteers are always happy to walk through what Rumpke takes and doesn’t take, Harms says, to help people better understand the region’s recycling options. “We want people to be careful because it can get very specific,” she says. “We want the program to be a success and keep more things out of the landfill but not lead to more wish-cycling—meaning people throw in things just hoping they can be recycled.”

The Hefty ReNew program, for example, accepts clear candy and granola bar wrappers but not candy and granola wrappers with foil lining.

Where do the newly recycled materials end up? The Hub has found a transparent, closed-loop recycling and manufacturing company called D6 Inc. to accept No. 1 thermoform plastic items. D6 is based in Sulphur Springs, Texas, and turns No. 1 plastics back into No. 1 plastics so they can be repurposed again and again, Harms says.

“These No. 1 plastics were our last gap in plastic recycling,” she says. Collecting them meant raising money for a new $17,000 plastic baler for the Hub, which expects to collect and bale enough No. 1 plastic to send a full semi-truck to D6. “And they pay us for it.”

The contents of the Hefty ReNew bags are shipped by Rumpke to facilities where the materials can become new and useful products, such as plastic building materials. Rumpke officials say 38 bags can become one plastic park bench, for example.

The Hefty ReNew Program is available in parts of Georgia, Idaho, Nebraska, and Tennessee and as of the end of 2023 had diverted more than 5 million pounds of waste from landfills.

For me, it took adding another trash can in my kitchen pantry and becoming familiar with the details of both programs. I now have one trash can for landfill waste, one for loose Rumpke recyclables, one for the Hefty ReNew bag, and a fourth headed to the Cincinnati Recycling & Reuse Hub. Will you step up your recycling game, too?