Recycling Center Reopens After Equipment Upgrades to Accept Cartons

December 17, 2017

After a very busy 3 weeks at the Kent County Recycling Center, we’re happy to announce that we will reopen Monday AND you can now recycle cartons!

If you’ve been storing your recycling until we reopen, please put it out for collection on your next scheduled collection day. If you’ve accumulated more than your cart will hold, check with your hauler to see if they can pick up extra this week or use one of Kent County’s recycling drop-off stations. Thank you for your patience during the last three weeks!

Kent County entered into a planned facility outage on Tuesday, November 28 to install equipment to mechanically sort paper cartons and corrugated cardboard to help keep up with the community’s growing recycling needs. We expected the outage to go through December 19 but we’re ready to begin processing recyclables a day ahead of schedule.

The Recycling Education Center will be open to the public and staff will be available to answer questions on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week from 1-5pm. Come see the new equipment and learn about carton recycling! The facility address is 977 Wealthy SW in Grand Rapids.

As a result of the upgrades, residents and businesses whose recycling comes to Kent County’s Recycling Center will be able to include cartons, including empty creamer, soy and almond milk containers, boxes of wine, juice boxes, milk cartons and boxed water.

The Kent County Recycling & Education Center is approaching its eighth year of processing single-stream recycling. Over the past seven years, the center has undergone periodic maintenance and upgrades to adapt to changes in community recycling habits. Kent County is investing $1.5 million into this round of upgrades.

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