Residents have been having many questions regarding recycling at the curb these past few months. I hope to answer many of your questions with this column this month. I would love to hear from you if you have been having problems of any kind with your recycling cart pickup, questions about what to recycle or if you have a cart that is not readily identified as a recycling cart.

Recycling is paid for a special assessment on property taxes. Residents who live within city limits pay a little more than those residents who do not. The recycling carts that you have at your home can be marked either as Lyon County Recycling or they may say Waste Management.

The Waste Management carts were purchased over 10 years ago and have been used as recycling carts ever since. If you have a cart that you believe is not effectively marked as a recycling cart, (carts should have a green body and a yellow lid), please call me. There are recycling carts in the system that are all green. If they no longer have a recycling sticker on the lid, we will provide a sticker for the top of the lid. As these carts become broken or unusable, they are slowly being replaced with carts marked as Lyon County Recycling. Carts that are all green have been missed during recycling curbside pickup.

The other change that Lyon County has been going through is the time that your recycling carts are being picked up. If there are any hiccups in the routes, it may delay the recycling carts being picked up in your community. Please be patient. Please give the recycling hauler all day to get to your home.

One aspect of curbside recycling that has continued in the area for the past three years is the street construction within your city which can also cause delays. This is coupled with residents who live on streets where half of the street is placing their carts on the street and the other half are placing their recycling in the alleyway. The new hauler has found this a little confusing and we are working with them to address this situation by having them drive through all of the streets and all of the alleyways. This means that this will cause some delays.

Please place your cart out to the curb the night before recycling is picked up. There are cities that recycling pickup starts at 3:30 in the morning. If you place your cart out to the curb after they have been by, you will be missed.

Please keep in mind that on windy days, we still will be by to pick up recycling carts. The wind in our area, as we all know, can be quite strong and sometimes the recycling carts can tip over. The drivers of the trucks coming around do not get out of their trucks to pick up any recycling that may have been blown around. This has been a policy since the beginning of recycling in Lyon County. If we wait until the wind stops blowing, we would hardly ever recycle using carts. It is an unfortunate part of living in southwestern Minnesota.

The Lyon County hauler, West Central Sanitation, will continue to improve its service to all communities in Lyon County. If you were missed, we will make sure that your address is added into their tracking system. They can tell me what time of the day that they were past your property and whether or not your cart was out at the street. They are currently picking up a little over 6,200 recycling carts each recycling week. Your recycling is picked up and sent to a transfer station in Redwood Falls and from there it is transported to Dem-Con in Shakopee. Dem-Con, sorts it and sells it to other materials plants where it is used to make other containers or paper.

The last reminder is that we moved the community recycling containers from the old County Fair grocery parking lot this past April. They are now in the first parking lot at the fairgrounds. We had to move them from the County Fair grocery parking lot because of the amount of trash and other items that were left there. We have and are using cameras, which cover the community recycling containers as well as areas around the buildings at the fairgrounds, which has helped the situation.

If you should have any questions about recycling in Lyon County, please give me a call at (507) 532-1307 during business hours, Monday-Friday 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. If you need to leave a message, please leave your name and telephone number so I can call you back.