La Crosse residents will soon no longer be able to put Styrofoam and some other plastics in with the recycling.
Harter’s Quick Clean-Up and the city of La Crosse are tweaking recycling rules for city residents after a Monday decision by the Board of Public Works allowed the company to stop taking three types of low-grade plastic.

Matt Harter
The company will no longer process plastics labeled 3, 6 and 7, which includes polyvinyl chloride, polystyrene and other very low-grade plastics, after a request from Mathias Harter, general manager of Harter’s Green Circle Recycling.
The small change will be included on the mailer that goes out each year to users, Harter told the board.
“It’s not going to hurt us at all. We’re talking less than half of one percent of the overall stream,” Harter said.
They will stop taking PVC pipes and vinyl siding, as well as Styrofoam, plastic forks and spoons, clothes hangers and other plastics labeled 3, 6 and 7.
“There’s just nothing to do with them when we recycle them. When we take them in our recycling plant, we can’t ship them anywhere and have someone reuse them, so currently they go to the waste-energy facility,” Harter said.
The move should lower costs and increase efficiencies for Harter’s, which will help combat changing markets due to China’s recent ban on imported plastic waste. While Harter predicted the markets would eventually recover from the change, the company is looking for ways to operate more efficiently.
“This helps because it cleans it up. Really when you’re competing in a saturated market, there’s a lot of material out there, if you’re able to clean the material up, then your stuff is more attractive,” Harter said.
With no market to sell those materials, it doesn’t make sense to continue to collect them.
“It takes effort to pull them out of the stream and some of them we miss and they go in with other materials in the paper bails or wherever they end up going when they make it down the wrong channel, and they contaminate that,” Harter said.
While council member Gary Padesky understood Harter’s concerns, he wondered how they would avoid higher waste after eliminating some categories of plastic.

Padesky
“La Crosse does a really good job of recycling now. How would we stop people from getting confused on this and end up with a lot more recyclables in the trash?” Padesky asked.
Harter doesn’t expect the change to affect the volume of material recycled in the city, because the materials make up so little of the recycled materials.
“Usually the people who pay attention to this type of information, media that’s put out, they’re the people that care and they’re going to pay attention and do the right thing,” Harter said.
Photos: What happens to your trash and recycling in La Crosse?
What happens to your trash and recycling?

Warehouse workers at Harter's Quick Clean Up Service sort through recycled material in May 2018 in La Crosse. If you look closely, you can see a Raisin Bran box, although there's no way to tell if that's our Raisin Bran box. Recycling at the facility has doubled in the past four years.
What happens to your trash and recycling?

Matt Harter, project manager at Harter's Quick Clean Up Service in La Crosse, stands among piles of recycled paper, plastic and cardboard in May 2018 before it is sorted and bailed.
What happens to your trash and recycling?

Bails of recycled plastic bottles at Harter's Quick Clean Up Service in La Crosse.
What happens to your trash and recycling?

Bails of recycled cardboard are picked up and moved in May 2018 at Harter's Quick Clean Up Service in La Crosse.
What happens to your trash and recycling?

Bails of recycled materials are get stacked up in May 2018 at Harter's Quick Clean Up Service in La Crosse.
What happens to your trash and recycling?

Aluminum and plastic bottles are sorted through after being recycled in May 2018 at Harter's Quick Clean Up Service in La Crosse.
What happens to your trash and recycling?

Recycled materials are unloaded at Harter's Quick Clean Up Service sorting facility in La Crosse.
What happens to your trash and recycling?

Warehouse workers at Harter's Harter's Quick Clean Up Service sort through recycled material in May 2018 in La Crosse.
What happens to your trash and recycling?

Recycled materials are unloaded onto a conveyor belt at Harter's Quick Clean Up Service in La Crosse in May 2018, where they will go on to be sorted and bailed.
What happens to your trash and recycling?

Garbage from a J & J Rubbish Service Truck falls out onto an unloading dock at Miller Scrap in Winona in May 2018. A hauler from J & J can pick up anywhere from 400 to 500 bins of trash in a day. The hydraulic press in back can smash up to 30 couches into one load.
What happens to your trash and recycling?

A J&J Rubbish Service truck backs into the unloading dock at Miller Scrap in May 2018.
What happens to your trash and recycling?

Garbage continues to build up inside Miller Scrap last month as trucks dump off material in May 2018.
Jourdan Vian can be reached at jvian@lacrossetribune.com or follow her on Twitter at @Jourdan_LCT.