Recycling in Greensboro can be complicated and confusing.
Now the City of Greensboro has added a degree of difficulty, making it even more difficult to keep up with the every-other-week recycling schedule.
The city sent out the annual recycling calendars to residents this week and later sent out a press release that states the calendars are incorrect and “Residents are asked to recycle the original mailer.”
Garbage and yard waste are collected each week, but recycling collection is every other week – thus the need for a calendar.
But how many residents of Greensboro receive city press releases?
It seems like a safe assumption that a good many of those incorrect “recycling calendars” are already posted on refrigerators. Soon residents will receive a new and hopefully correct recycling calendar with a notice to recycle the earlier calendar and replace it with the new one, but the odds are a lot of incorrect recycling calendars are going to still be out there listing incorrect information about the every-other-week recycling schedule.
And it’s more important now to get it right than it used to be. In 2022, the City Council added some teeth to the garbage, recycling and yard waste collection ordinance. There is now a $25 fine for placing your garbage or recycling containers on the street earlier than 7 p.m. of the day before collection or leaving them on the street later than 7 p.m. on the day of collection. It is also illegal to place your containers on the street before dusk on Sunday, regardless of what your collection day is.
So if someone followed the incorrect recycling schedule sent out by the city and placed their recycling container on the street on the wrong day, they could be subject to a $25 fine.
The city does, however, provide a solution, and that is the free GSO Collects app. Not only does it have the correct recycling schedule, but you can also look up items and find out whether they should go in the recycling container or the garbage container. And the recycling calendar you received from the city definitely belongs in the recycling container and not on the refrigerator.
Guess I’m going to get fined in the winter months because I’m not waiting till 7 pm, in the dark, to move my containers to the street! Mornings are too hectic to remember to do it then!
Same mistake as last year…another incorrect schedule. SNAFU, but all is well in Greensboro.
Just how much will this error cost in reprinting and postage? Everyone needs a good editor and apparently the city employee that messed this up could really use someone checking behind him or her.
I was about to say that we need to recycle most or all of our city council, but that would put us at risk of getting them back again. We need to permanently dispose of them from city government.