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NANTICOKE — A recently awarded grant will allow the city to buy and distribute recycling containers to residents.
Nanticoke was one of six Luzerne County municipalities awarded a Department of Environmental Protection grant for its recycling collection and education programs.
The DEP awarded $16.7 million in grants to 120 municipalities in the Commonwealth. The grant allots up to 90 percent of recycling program costs to municipalities and counties, whereas distressed municipalities are eligible for up to 100-percent program coverage.
“It’s actually for containers,” Donna Wall, interim city manager for Nanticoke, said noting the city will be able to buy 5,000 high containers with the money.
Wall explained that “a few years ago” the city went single-stream recycling — all recyclables can be mixed in one container — and since some residents moved out or died, the city doesn’t have containers in stock for new residents. The decision to go single-stream was a “way to get people to recycle.”
One rule of single-stream recycling, Wall said, is to rinse out jars before recycling them.
“When you eat spaghetti, you’re suppose to wash out the heavy stuff,” she said.
The city council will have to decide whether to bid the containers out or go through the state funded COSTARS program.
“They’re (the containers) very expensive,” she said.
Wall expects the city to have the containers by the fall.
The second part of the grant allots money to educate the public on how to recycle, the details of which Wall said she “has to get creative” with. She wasn’t the city manager at the time the grant application was submitted, so she isn’t sure of the wording of the grant’s educational requirements, she said.
“We could put it on our yearly newsletter,” Wall said with a chuckle.