Region of Peel Asking Residents to Avoid Common Recycling Mistake

You might pride yourself on being a meticulous and earth-conscious recycling aficionado, but are you sure you're doing it right?

If you've ever tossed out your recyclables in plastic grocery bags, there's a good chance you never really recycled at all.

The Region of Peel has put out a video reminding residents to please leave their recycled products loose in their bins.

"Recycling should go directly into your recycling cart," the video says. "Please don't put your recycling into plastic grocery bags. These bags are too small to be opened by the automated bag breaker and because the sorting conveyors move so quickly, there's no time for the operators to grab, open and sort each individual bag."

If the bags can't be broken down and the contents can't be hand-sorted, the waste ends up in a landfill anyways.

For that reason, residents are advised to simply throw recyclable products directly into their bins. People who live in condos or apartments should also follow this rule and throw products directly into their building's bin or recycling chute.

So there you have it. If you have a bin full of egg cartons and newspapers and wine bottles, you don't have to bag them before leaving them on the curb or tossing them down the chute. If you do, you'll have wasted your recycling efforts.