Location: 4047 States Prison Hollow Road
Hours of Operation: The center is open on the 2nd and 4th Saturday of every month from 9am to 12pm.
Volunteers: The Recycling Center is a volunteer run town service. Volunteers are always needed to assist residents and guide appropriate use of the facility. Please sign up for a Saturday morning by contacting Recycling@monktonvt.com
Not Just Recycling
Trash is also accepted at the recycling center on Saturdays. Our current hauler is Acker Waste Management and they will accept your waste for a fee. Vermont’s law banning food scraps from your trash went into effect on 7/1/20. Acker will also accept your food scraps for a fee.
What can you recycle at the Monkton Recycling Center?
- Glass: bottles and jars
- Paper: mixed paper and cardboard
- Plastic: bottles, tubs, jugs
- Metal: aluminum and steel cans
Everything must be clean and dry and measure at least 2 inches on two sides.
- The usage of water and energy to create new materials is reduced
- You save trees!
- Recyclable material is diverted from the landfill
- You support the local economy and create jobs
The cleaner the better, but items don’t have to be immaculate to be recyclable. If you rinse well, shake out the water, and leave less than a teaspoon of residual goo — roughly a bottle cap full — it’s fine. This is a question and explanation from a fun quiz on recycling from the Washington Post. Check it out here.
What is NOT recyclable at the Monkton Recycling Center?
- Black plastic: food containers, utensils
- Filmy plastic: bread bags, plastic grocery bags
- Durable goods: shoes, frying pans, vacuum hoses, etc.
What Happens When I Recycle Wrong?
Placing unacceptable items into the recycling container can:
- Create serious risk for the employees who sort our recycling
- Contaminate an entire load of recyclables causing the material to be sent to the landfill
- Decreases the value of your recyclables
- Cause expensive damage to the machines that process and sort the recyclables
Batteries are the supervillains, especially lithium-ion ones. They can explode when damaged and have caused fires that burned down entire plants. Some facilities have had to be temporarily shut down twice in one week recently because of fires started by lithium-ion batteries. This is another question and explanation from the Washington Post recycling quiz. Check it out here.
Please Recycle Right
Do not wish-cycle. When in doubt throw it out. Ask a volunteer if you have questions, or visit www.addisoncountyrecycles.org for more information about what is recyclable at the Monkton Recycling Center.
Some items that are not recyclable in Monkton are accepted for recycling at the District Transfer Station in Middlebury. Some of the things accepted include textiles, batteries, filmy plastic, hazardous waste, scrap metal, and fluorescent light bulbs. For more information visit www.addisoncountyrecycles.org.
A good motto from the Washington Post quiz. Check it out here.
A Little History
Recycling first started being collected at the old town garage on Monkton Road near the pond. Everything had to be sorted by type of material. The beginning year is a little hazy, but it started around 1998. It’s estimated that the recycling collection moved around 2001 to the current State Prison Hollow Road location. By 2003 the state of Vermont had shifted to a zero sort method of collecting recyclable material. The Monkton Maples 4-H Club was responsible for the center from 2003-2017. Starting in 2018, recycling volunteers included Scouts, long-time residents, and many neighbors of all ages.
Please do your part to recycle correctly. Take the time to learn what can and can’t go in the blue bins. Thank you for continuing to make recycling a success in Monkton.
Respectfully submitted,
Robin Hopps, Coordinator
Thank you, Jessica, for your years of coordinating a smooth-running Monkton Recycling Center.