The video above (click it to go watch it) and the explanation below are brought to you by some creative and civic-minded youths in our community, who are a part of a FIRST LEGO League team known as The Brick Dawgs.

In August of this year, the City of Harrisonburg switched to a single stream trash collection system.  Now residents can put all of their recyclables and trash together in the same container.  It gets sent to a facility an hour away that sorts the trash from the recyclable material.  This is a better system because now, much more of our trash will get recycled.  However, there is a problem.  When people put food waste or liquids in the trash, it makes it a lot harder for other things to be recycled.  It degrades and ruins some of the recyclable materials, especially newspapers or cardboard boxes, and then they can’t be recycled anymore.  Also, food is 60% water, so this adds unnecessary weight and volume to the trash that the city has to collect and transport, which costs a lot more money. 

In the past, the city has had a hard time educating residents about issues like this, because we have a changing population with the university, for example.  So we are trying to help.  We have made a stop motion video to educate people about not putting food and liquid waste in their trash and to tell people what they could do instead.  We are trying to spread the word about this new system and what Harrisonburg residents can do to help. 

Click here to watch their video.