City Expands Curbside Recycling Service

No more guilt over tossing that cottage cheese container in the trash.

No shame over discarding shampoo and conditioner bottles.

And those applesauce cups never have to haunt you again.

Why? North Canton residents now are able to toss those plastics (No. 3 through 7) in with the rest of their recyclables to be picked up curbside by Kimble Transfer & Recycling.

Scott Walter, business development manager, said the expanded service, which started in June, is a big win for the environment.

"If you recycle a ton of plastic, it saves the net energy equal to 1,500 gallons of gasoline," he said. "So we're just excited we can receive more of these 3 through 7s and try to conserve and preserve our fossil fuels."

The expanded service came about after the company opened its new Twinsburg Township recycling facility about a month ago.

"It has a lot of automated processes, some real state of the art equipment for recycling and included in that is an optical sorter for plastic material," Walter said. "It has a ray of light that travels across conveyers and detects the type of plastic on the belt and automatically segments the 1s and 2s and 3s-7s. It gave us the ability to efficiently recycle those 3-7s."

The plastics were before the opening of the Twinsburg Township facility.

Walter said the company will not take 3-7 plastics that are not "rigid." Those that aren't accepted are Styrofoam, plastic bags and stretch film.

Here's a list of some common 3-7 plastics that can be recycled:

• Ketchup and mustard bottles
• Cream cheese containers
• Cool Whip containers
• Salad dressing bottles 
• Juice bottles
• "Clam shell" food containers
• Microwavable food containers
• Margarine tubs
• Baby milk bottles
• Shampoo bottles 
• Cooking oil containers
• Hand soap bottles

Interested in learning more about the new Twinsburg facility? You can find .