Downtown Hastings has bright blue recycle bins scattered around town for residents and visitors to drop items they are done with when they are out and about enjoying the town; papers, pop cans and pop bottles they don’t want to carry around, and want to recycle.

Also on city streets, there are brown trash bins for things that are not recycled, like half-eaten cheeseburgers, diapers and dead flowers. Unfortunately, the blue containers are being used for recycle items and garbage alike, threatening the viability of the program.

Les’s Sanitary Service picks up the blue bins as a public service, and they are finding trash mixed in with the recyclable items, polluting the entire bin.  In one recent pickup swing, three of eight recycle containers could be recycled; the remaining five were contaminated by garbage.

Bill Sweeney, one on the owners of Les’s, said when trash and garbage is mixed in with recyclable items, they can’t sort out the garbage, it has to be taken to the landfill. That nullifies the efforts of recyclers, he said. “It doesn’t do a bit of good at all.”

“We want to get the word out,” said Community Development Specialist Sandra Ponsetto. “We don’t want to lose the program, it’s a nice convenience for folks who happen to be downtown but still want to help the environment by recycling.”

A simple reminder might help: Blue is to recycle, brown is for trash.