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Darien Says Goodbye to Sorting Recyclables

Darien residents now have the option of helping the environment without having to go through the hassle of sorting recyclable materials. Instead, they can switch to single-stream recycling, offered by companies such as Darien Disposal, which allows customers to throw all their recyclables into one bin.

"It's been going well. People have been embracing it," said Keith Pensiero, owner of Darien Disposal. He said about 160 people have signed on since the company started offering the service at the beginning of the year.

In this process, residents can throw all their materials into one container, pretty much everything except food scraps. It's then shipped to Willimantic, where it is sorted by a machine that can process and separate more than 25 tons of recyclable materials into sellable end products.

The program cuts residential garbage in half. Pensiero said the program was started to help the environment, as well as to reduce the multiple recycling containers that needed to be picked up. "Our guys were getting overwhelmed with recycling."

Connie Melvin of the Darien Environmental Group believes that single-stream recycling is a good way to encourage people to recycle more.

"People are too preoccupied to sort all their materials. This system makes it brainless for you," she said. She added that when big cities such as Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport introduced single-stream recycling, they all saw their recycling rates increase.

"The downside is that the more you commingle materials, the higher the sorting cost," she said. Pensiero agreed that the process was not cheap and that the service costs a little more than regular garbage pickup, but he said it was worth it to cut time, energy and landfills.

What do you think of single-stream recycling? Do you think it will make life easier? Share your thoughts in the comments below, on Facebook or on Twitter.

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