AMHERST – Christmas gifts will create mountains of wrapping paper in living rooms throughout the region on Sunday morning.
But how will those ranges of waste be disposed?
“The biggest issue for us at Christmastime is that we do not recycle wrapping paper. It’s actually garbage,” said Stephen Rayworth, solid waste manager at the Cumberland Joint Services Management Authority.
Waste haulers aren’t supposed to pick up recycle bags with wrapping paper in them but Rayworth said they do so anyway, and when those bags are hauled to the waste disposal plant it creates inefficiencies for waste managers at the plant.
“What happens is that all the blue bags get sorted manually,” he said. “So if it goes into the facility it gets sorted and it takes up staff time to put it in the appropriate spot.”
