Our new recycling program has begun, and we are now receiving more weeks of curbside service. Or haven’t you noticed? Maybe not, because the month of May has four full weeks and did not affect the new collection schedule — yet. In the next few weeks you may have to refer to the collection calendar if you haven’t already marked some of them in your house.

There are no day changes in the schedule. If you normally had curbside collection on a Monday, you will still be a Monday route. If you had your recycling picked up on a Thursday, you are still a Thursday route. That part did not change.

Another rule of thumb that may help you remember your recycling day is that the collection routes on the first and third weeks in the past are now yellow weeks and if you were a second and fourth collection route you are now a green week.

If you hear an announcement on the radio or read a statement in the newspaper in the future that refers to “this is a green recycling week” or this is a “yellow recycling week” you will associate your route with that color.

By changing to every-other- week we eliminate the months with a fifth week and your recycling can overflows before the next collection day arrives. If you are a snowbird, you need only check your calendar (you know, the one you marked with the nice stickers we provided) to see what week the recycling is being picked in your neighborhood.

In the last issue of Community News magazine, we inserted some stickers to mark calendars around your house as a reminder of your recycling week. If you are a green week the “true” recyclers will exchange the extra yellow stickers with people on yellow routes for their green stickers and the other way around. Now you’ll have enough of them to mark many calendars throughout the house and you’ll never miss a recycling day! We hope.

We have received numerous comments and questions recently about the plastic or metal rings on beverage containers. Are they recyclable or not?

Well, the answer is yes, they are. If you look at the “Recycling Information and Instruction” sheet, it will tell you to remove lids and rings but new technology will now allow us to recycle them.

The reason for removal is so the containers do not pop or explode when compressed. Another reason is that some people leave liquids in the containers and we don’t want that. By removing lids, liquid spills become the homeowners issue, not ours. It creates quite a mess when a bottle of water or soda goes into a compactor or shredding machine. When liquids are removed before being placed into the recycling stream it eliminates that problem for the processors.

We hope people will enjoy the new recycling schedule and not have problems remembering their week. The best method is to look down the street and see what your neighbors are doing. If everyone on the block has the wrong week, no harm is done and you’ll maybe find some comfort in the fact that other people sometimes also forget what week is recycling.

Randy Tuchtenhagen is the Freeborn County solid waste officer.