Do you know what you can and cannot put in your recycling bins?
The Annual Waste Diversion Report has been released by the Essex Windsor Solid Waste Authority and it shows there may still be some confusion.
Manager of Waste Diversion, Cam Wright feels a lot of people still have questions.
"Basically if you're talking about tin and aluminium cans or glass bottles and jars, it's fairly simple," says Wright. "We've been trying to explain to the public that plastic containers which originate in the grocery store are a component of our program, regardless of what the plastic is."
He says year-over-year, people in Windsor-Essex recycle about the same amount, but it needs to be more.
"At the same time of course, we don't need people putting everything into their blue box, we need to make sure that everyone is putting their paper products in the red box and their putting their container products in the blue box - and that's absolutely essential to the ongoing security of the program."
Wright also wants people to know it's a myth, that both recycling bins are dumped into the same spot on the truck, saying "it may not look like it and I know a lot of people, they look and they think it's all going in the same compartment but it's not. Every truck is split and if it's not split then in some cases when they're short trucks they will take one specific packer to a location but they'll only pick up one stream at a time."
The goal is to his 50% waste diversion which Wright says very few municipalities in the province reach that target. Windsor-Essex is currently at 34% diversion.