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Recycling Information Garbage and residential recycling collection is provided as a service through Duncan Disposal Service Company Inc. If you have any questions concerning services provided by Duncan Disposal you can contact them direct at 972-225-5252. Garbage, Trash and Recycling are to be placed at your designated pickup point by 7:00 AM the day of pickup. The City of Duncanville started its full-scale residential recycling program in January 1996. In 1999 the one-sort recycling system was implemented. The one-sort system allows all items accepted in the recycling program to be placed together inside the green recycling bin. Items accepted for recycling:
Items commonly placed in the recycle bin that are not accepted for recycling:
Recycling collection: Recycling is picked up once a week, beginning at 7 a.m. Please keep recycling and garbage separated. For additional information, please call Duncan Disposal at 972-225-5252. Additional Infomation Q: Why is it important to recycle? A: Recycling
is important for many reasons. Often we promote recycling as a way
to keep waste Q: How can one person make a difference? A: If not you, who? If we combine all our individual efforts together, we can make a difference. To look at it another way, each of us contributes individually to the waste problem. All the millions and millions of tons of waste that currently goes to landfills started as an old pair of slippers, a broken toaster or a used magazine at somebody's house, or your house! Q: When did recycling start? A: Recycling has really been around for perhaps thousands of years! For example, ancient cultures that began making metal products, could melt down old broken items like pots or swords and make new ones. More recently, during World War I and II, people would have paper drives and metal drives to collect materials for the war effort. Nothing was wasted! When landfilling became a cheap way dispose of trash in the 1940's and 1950's, recycling was less popular. But modern recycling of glass, paper, cans, etc. became more popular again in the 1970's with drop-off recycling centers, and in the late 1980's and 1990's with curbside collection. Mother nature is, of course, the ultimate recycler... without the natural decay or composting process, we'd all be covered in leaves and other dead organic matter! Q: When recycling came about, did many people contribute to it? A: Recycling has been very popular in most communities, but often there is resistance if people think it will cost more money, or take more time. Often there is difficulty over who will pay for recycling (i.e. the city, or the residents) but when you analyze the savings of not throwing things in the landfill (which costs an average of $50 per ton to collect and dispose of waste) it make sense to recycle. Plus, many recyclable products can be sold to help cover the cost of processing. Newspapers, for example, have to be cleaned of contaminants after collection, baled or compacted, and then transported to a big paper recycling company that turns the paper into pulp and then into new products. All this costs money. Q: How does recycling help the environment? A: Recycling helps the environment by slowing down the rate at which we have to burn garbage or put it in landfills. With fewer landfills we can have more space for people to farm, live, and work. Recycling also helps by reducing our need to consume fresh natural resources to make new products. As a result we can save these resources for use by future generations. Most importantly, recycling saves energy and reduces pollution. This could help slow down global climate change, another environmental problem caused by burning fossil fuels like oil and gas. Q: What would happen if everyone stopped recycling? A: Disposing of your garbage could become much more expensive. Since everybody would be throwing away everything, landfills would fill up faster. We would have to build more and more to accept all of the new garbage. People who have to live near landfills are generally opposed to building new ones. Many of our natural resources would disappear even faster. The supply of any material on our Earth is limited. While it may seem like we could never run out, if we keep filling our landfills with aluminum, plastic, and steel there will eventually be no more left. Q: What can be made with recycled items? A: There are
more recycled content products on the market than we can list here.
Cardboard, office Q: Do you think recycling will be the way of the future or do you think it is already? A: Yes, recycling is the way of the future. People do not want to build new landfills, and are also starting to recognize that it is just plain wasteful to throw so many reusable things away. There are a lot of energy savings and resource savings associated with recycling. Q: Do many companies or schools recycle? A: Many businesses
recycle to save money. The most commonly recycled material at businesses
is Q: Is the amount of participation in recycling increasing or decreasing year by year? A: Participation
in recycling programs reached a new peak in the 1990's as most communities
in the Q: Are there any consequences for recycling? A: There have
been some environmental problems associated with recycling. There
are always Q: What do the little numbers on the bottom of plastic containers represent or stand for? A: These numbers tell us from what kind of plastic the container was made. If different kinds of plastic are recycled together, the whole batch is ruined. These numbers make it easy for people to know which containers are recyclable in their community and which are not. These numbers break all plastics down into 7 categories. #1- PET - Polyethylene Teraphthalate. Almost every transparent plastic bottle is made from this kind of plastic. This includes soda bottles and large clear juice bottles. Many communities accept PET. #2 - HDPE - High Density Polyethylene. This plastic comes in many different forms. It can be made without color as it is in milk jugs. It can be dyed any color for detergent bottles or plastic buckets. Dyed HDPE is worth less money to recyclers than clear HDPE. They are usually kept separate when recycled.There are also two different ways to make containers out of HDPE, Injection Molding or Blow Molding. Injection molded containers have a large mouth and a little dot on the bottom. Yogurt containers and butter tubs are made this way. Blow molded containers have a narrow mouth and a seam that runs from one side of the mouth under the bottom and back to the other side of the mouth. Different chemicals are used in these processes. This makes these two kinds of HDPE slightly different, so they can't be mixed when recycled. Check with your local government to see which kinds of HDPE your community accepts. #3 - V - Polyvinyl
Chloride. This plastic, called PVC for short, holds up better against
some oils and #4 - LDPE - Low Density Polyethylene. This is a lightweight version of HDPE. It is frequently used for garbage bags and bread bags. LDPE is recyclable, but it is very expensive to transport because it is so light. As a result most communities do not recycle LDPE. #5 - PP - Polypropylene. This plastic is commonly used for battery casings and butter tubs. PP is very easy to recycle but most communities do not use enough PP to make it cost effective to recycle it. Therefore, most communities do not collect it. PP is recycled, however, by industries that use large quantities of it. #6 - PS - Polystyrene. This is a common plastic with many uses. It is often referred to by a brand name "Styrofoam" PS is used to make coolers, plastic silverware, food boxes, egg cartons, and disposable dishes. PS is very light and expensive to transport. This makes it very expensive to recycle. Because of this, most communities do not accept PS. #7 - The #7 plastics refer to anything that does not fit into a category above. This may be because it is made from a plastic that is not listed above, like potato chip bags or the container contains more than one kind of plastic, such as a juice box. Containers made from plastics mixed with other materials are also included in this category. These numbers are meant to be a guide for people who want to recycle their containers after they use them. They can also help you to decide which products to buy before you use them. If you have a choice between two products where one comes in a bottle that you can recycle in your community and the other comes in a bottle that cannot be recycled which should you buy? Of course, it is the one you can recycle. If everybody bought products in recyclable containers then businesses would only sell their products in recyclable containers. That would reduce wasted plastic dramatically. Q: Is paper worth any money when you recycle it? A: There are
many different kinds of paper, and the value of recycled paper changes
all the time. HOWEVER, throwing it away is not free! It cost an average of $50 to collect and dispose of trash! If you enter that into the equation, it costs less to recycle. Sometimes, solid waste managers or city officials have a hard time accounting for these "avoided disposal costs", however. There are many other external costs of waste that people don't always think about. These include long-term environmental harm from landfills, cost of building new landfills (and lots of public opposition) wasted resources being buried in landfills, wasted energy in the extraction of raw materials that could have been avoided through recycling, and so on. |