My plastic grocery bag has a number 4 recyclable symbol on it. Why can it not go into my single stream recycling?
Do not place plastic bags or any type of plastic film into mixed recycling because it causes problems for the sorting equipment. It gets wrapped around the rollers in the equipment much like a string gets wrapped around a vacuum cleaner roller or fan. When this occurs it does not allow the equipment to sort material properly and leads to more contamination in the sorted material. You can recycle your plastic bags at most grocery stores. The majority of this material is used to make plastic and composite lumber.
Email all questions to the Office of Sustainability at gogreen@towson.edu.
