City is restarting curbside recycling

Beginning Monday, Aug. 2, customers should put out the recycling container on their regular garbage collection day.

Hopkinsville is bringing back curbside recycling after shutting the service down for more than a year during the coronavirus pandemic. 

Beginning Monday, Aug. 2, customers should put out the recycling container on their regular garbage collection day, city officials said in a news release. 

The service was suspended in late March 2020, in part because COVID-19 safety measures made it difficult for the city to use its small recycling center to sort materials. The pandemic also disrupted recycling programs across the country

The Hopkinsville Solid Waste Enterprise will automatically collect materials from recycling containers of existing customers, and billing will begin in September. 

Anyone who wants to begin curbside recycling should sign up online or call the solid waste office at 270-887-6245. The cost is $5.50 a month.

“Recycling really makes a difference and there is no better time to join local efforts to conserve and expand the lifespan of our landfill,” Tony Sicari, the city’s solid waste manager, said in the release.

The recycling drop-off locations will remain closed until further notice, he said. 

Customers should put items in loose form in the containers. Plastic bags are not among the items the city can recycle. 

Items that are acceptable include metals, paper, plastic bottles, aluminum and tin cans, newsprint, magazines, corrugated cardboard, fiber board, junk mail and telephone books. 

Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. She spent 30 years as a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition.