SOUTH ORANGE, NJ — Giordano Recycling, the company that collects South Orange’s recycling, recently announced that it will no longer accept plastic bags in curbside recycling. Previously, South Orange had single-stream recycling in which paper and plastic could be mixed.
“The recycling industry at this moment is currently undergoing many serious changes that are affecting curbside single-stream collection,” Giordano Recycling wrote in an announcement. “China has recently put a ban on 24 different types of plastics, and also put strict quality standards on recycling. This is part of several movements that were initiated including the ‘Green Fence’ and ‘Green Sword’ that have impacted quality standards for marketable commodities. We need to clean up recycling curbside.
“We are at contamination levels of 20 percent to 25 percent across all of the townships we service,” the announcement continued. “This is very problematic as contamination and moisture levels have made entire loads unmarketable. Our facility, G&F Recycling & Salvage Corp., is under an equipment upgrade process to comply with China’s new standards. We have made a substantial investment towards our equipment, but without clean material, we will continue to have issues during processing.
“Our inspectors will reject our materials if we do not comply with these regulations,” the announcement concludes. “If you have any questions, please contact service@gogreengiordano.com or call us at 1-800-216-2250, ext. 2.”
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