Waste Partners inc.

LAKES AREA RECYCLING SERVICES

Contamination in Recycling loads is increasing, please be sure to follow the program guidelines and refrain from placing non-recyclable items in your recycling container.

Serving the brainerd lakes area

These Materials are NOT Recyclable in our current Recycling Program.

Aerosol Cans / Paint Cans
Automotive Fluid Containers
Batteries
Cardboard Tubes (paper towel tubes/ wrapping paper tubes/ toilet paper tubes)
Dishes / Glassware
Fluorescent Bulbs/ Light Bulbs
Foam Cups and Packaging (Styrofoam)
Food Service Paper Products
Landscape Edging
Pizza Boxes with Food Waste
Plastic Bags /Plastic Wrappings
Plastic Furniture
Plastic Plant Containers
Pottery/ Ceramics
Pots and Pans
Waxed Paper/ Waxed Cardboard
Window Panes/ Mirrors

Curbside Residential Recycle Collection

Waste Partners provides residential curbside recycling services to our customers in Brainerd, Breezy Point, Baxter, Crosslake (Cross Lake), Pequot Lakes and Pine River at no additional cost.  (Some areas not included, please call the office to see if there is curbside recycling in your area). Please note, we do not offer residential drive-in recycling services. The recycling receptacle would need to remain out at the road to collect your material in the most efficient manner.

 

With Waste Partners commingle recycle program, you do not need to separate the glass, cans or plastic, you can commingle the glass, cans and plastic in the recycling container.

01

GLASS

Glass bottles and jars; clear, green and brown; rinse clean, remove lids and caps, and place in your recycling container.

02

Plastic Containers

Bottles and jugs with a neck are most likely to be made of plastic that can be recycled. (Remove pumps and metal handles, rinse clean. No automotive fluid containers, hazardous material containers, plastic bags, landscape edging, plant containers or plastic furniture).

The code number on the bottom of plastic packaging is often mistaken as a guide to the recyclability of the plastic. The code on the bottom is a “Resin Identification Code” that identifies the type of plastic that is used to produce the packaging.

03

Metal/Aluminum Cans

Rinse Clean, no need to remove labels.

04

Newspapers/Magazines/Mail

Place in a separate paper bag and set next to or on top of your recycling bin. No need to separate if you have a single stream cart.

05

Cardboard

Flatten and stack in sheets no larger than 3′ X 3′. Place directly in receptacle if you have a single stream cart.

Single Stream | Curbside Residential Recycle Collection

We have Single Stream Recycling Carts in some of our Recycling Collection communities. Call our office if you are interested in one of these recycling carts

Please follow the instructions printed on the top of the orange container lid.

 

Visit the Waste Partners Facebook page to see where your recycling ends up!

Commercial Recycling

Waste Partners Inc. can reduce your waste collection costs with our commercial recycling services.

The materials we collect for recycling are:

Corrugated cardboard
Mixed paper (newspaper & office paper)
Commingled glass bottles and jars
Plastic Containers with a neck

Aluminum/tin cans

Frequently Asked Questions Seasonal Subscription Services Recycling Services Pine River and Brainerd garbage and recycling Commercial Recycling Truck Waste Partners
Common Recycling Mistakes

We all must pay extra attention to what we put in our recycle containers. While you may wish for an item to be recycled (wishcycling), placing non-recyclable materials in your recycle container actually does more harm than good. That item will contaminate the load of recyclables requiring extra effort to clean out or may result in a rejected load that will be sent to the landfill.

Reference
Cass County Solid Waste & Recycling Guide
Life Cycle of of Recycled Materials – Lakeland News Story

Brake rotors, wheels & tires, batteries, and other metal car parts aren’t recyclable in curbside recycling program. The only metal materials that can be recycled are generally food packaging, such as aluminum beverage cans and metal food cans. Heavy metal parts should be taken to a scrap metal dealer.

Any kind of compressed gas tank in your recycling is UNSAFE. This includes the likes of refillable propane tanks used for camp stoves, disposable propane canisters, butane canisters, helium balloon tanks, and oxygen tanks. These pose massive health and safety risks. Compressed gas cylinders could rupture and catch fire, so it’s vital that they’re disposed of properly at a safe drop-off location!

Similar to propane tanks, plastic gas cans pose a large risk of explosion and fire!

This type of plastic is rarely labeled with a Resin Identification Code (recycle number) which is needed to identify the type of plastic for proper recycling. In addition, this material is usually quite dirty and can contaminate the true recyclable plastics.

These are another item that can’t be recycled because one toy will often contain a variety of different plastic types. In order for a plastic item to be recycled, it must first contain only 1 type plastic, making plastic toys nearly impossible to recycle in a residential curbside recycle program.

No batteries are allowed in your curbside recycle container, and Lithium Batteries are perhaps the most dangerous. For starters, they’re often filled with acid and some types can start fires when they get smashed with other recyclables. Lithium-ion batteries usually contain a metal coil and a flammable lithium-ion fluid. Tiny metal fragments float in the liquid. The contents of the battery are under pressure, so if a metal fragment punctures a partition that keeps the components separate or the battery is punctured in our truck or recycling facility, the lithium reacts with water in the air vigorously, generating high heat and often a fire!

 

Many hardware stores accept batteries for recycling.

This one might surprise people – it’s a commonly made mistake when recycling. No plastic bags are able to be recycled at standard recycling facilities. Not only are they not recyclable at single sort recycle facilities, but when people put them in the container loose, they can blow away and cause havoc on the equipment used to process recyclable material causing down time to equipment.

 

Curbside recycling is collected and processed at Material Recovery Facilities (MRF’s). One of the common items that we find in the recycling stream are consumer plastic bags. I.e. Target bags, Wal-Mart bags, etc. These plastic bags cause havoc at the sorting facility and create increased downtime. Please, do not place loose bags in your recycle container.

NO. You may feel you are being tidy by bagging your recyclables before you put them in the cart. But all your hard work can actually be working against the recycling process. Instead of bagging recyclables, please dump loose materials into the curbside bin.