The holiday season has passed, but the City of Lexington will accept strings of lights and other electronics at 13 sites around town through January 12th. Julie Hatter is the plant manager of the city’s recycling center. She said light strings should never be put in recycling bins.
“Typically, when we do see those string lights, it gets wrapped up in the equipment. And so when that happens, we do have to shut down the equipment. We have to lock out, tag out, and have someone enter in the equipment, or get on top of the equipment to cut those lights out.”
Hatter said they can also damage equipment – and cause them to toss out materials that can be recycled.
“Once we start running, we have a very short time window to either put the material where it needs to go into the drum feeder to be processed, or we have to make the decision to put it out in a container to be sent to the transfer station.”
Another city official said the city has a contract with a company that accepts electronic waste and deconstructs it, salvaging parts that can be saved.
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