Some local cities in Crow Wing County are making changes to their recycling programs. The City of Emily is permanently closing its local recycling area and the City of Crosslake will no longer be accepting plastic in its recycling program.

The changes come due to rapidly increasing recycling costs that have been taking place nationwide. Roughly a year and a half ago, China stopped accepting recycling from the U.S., which has caused the recent spike in recycling prices. The Crow Wing County Solid Waste Committee is continuing to meet and discuss options to keep costs down while still giving county residents an opportunity to recycle.

“Costs are going up and all these locations are thinking of ways to reduce costs and one of those ways is to cut plastics, so that is what they did at Crosslake, they don’t accept plastic anymore,” said Crow Wing County Environmental Services Supervisor Ryan Simonson. “You can still recycle your paper, your cardboard, your glass I believe, but just not plastic, so they just kind of cut one product out to keep costs down.”

Crow Wing County still has ten free-service recycling drop sites scattered across the county. Crosslake is one of those ten locations and residents are encouraged to use the drop site if they don’t have curbside recycling.

By — Chaz Mootz