Recycling will resume in Santa Rosa County this Thursday, June 8, after services were suspended in April.
Thursday will be a soft restart of the recycling program and a full restart will begin on Monday, June 19, according to Santa Rosa County.
Emerald Coast Utilities Authority stopped receiving mixed recyclables April 14 due to staff turnover. Initially, the pause in service was supposed to be four weeks. The facility reopened on Monday.
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ECUA shut down recycling services for several months in 2022 due to equipment breakdown. In 2019, ECUA canceled its recycling service in Santa Rosa County citing high contamination rates. When service resumed nine months later, the county encouraged residents to pay attention to items that went in recycling bins.
That’s the same message county staff is sending now. Staff will now visually inspect each load of recyclable materials to ensure it will be accepted by ECUA’s processing facility.
“Ensuring a quality product is delivered to ECUA’s processing facility is critical to the success of recycling,” reads a press release from the county.
Residents are encouraged to look for updates from their waste haulers on when they will begin collecting recycling.
Here are some tips from the county:
Santa Rosa County residents are encouraged to get back to the basics and focus on only placing the following items in their curbside recycling bin:
- Clean and dry cardboard and paper
- Empty, clean, and dry aluminum and steel cans (no pet food cans due to the plastic liner)
- Empty, clean, and dry plastic bottles and jugs
The following should never be placed in the recycle bins:
- Tanglers - hoses (including garden hoses), cords, holiday lights, ropes, etc. tangle up recycling equipment. Place in regular household garbage.
- Styrofoam - these products crumble in the machinery. Place in regular household garbage.
- Scrap metal - take mixed metals and wires to the Central Landfill metal recycling bin or a local scrap recycling business.
- Textiles - consider donating clothing and other textiles to a thrift store.
- Aerosol cans - these can be fire hazards and should be disposed of at the household hazardous waste (HHW) center.
- Hazardous or medical waste - these items should always be disposed of at the HHW center.
The county’s household hazardous waste center is located near the entrance before the weigh station of the Central Landfill, 6337 Da Lisa Road in Milton. Service is provided free of charge to all Santa Rosa County Residents and is open Monday through Saturday, 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
For more information, visit www.santarosa.fl.gov/recycling.