SEQUIM — Whatever you do, don’t contaminate your waste stream.

That’s the message Kent Kovalenko hopes to convey to the North Olympic Peninsula’s latest recycling-cart renters.

Kovalenko, a district manager at Waste Connections, the company providing recycling and trash pickup for Sequim, Port Angeles and Port Townsend, has been getting an earful about changes in the recycling system here.

Sequim’s curbside-pickup customers have received new 96-gallon bins — relatively giant carts — for their recyclable paper, plastic and tin.

So this month, they’re giving up their three small boxes for separate recyclables and going to what’s called “commingling,” in waste-speak.

Glass contaminates

The one-bin commingling, Kovalenko explained, works when glass isn’t tossed in with the other stuff.

Glass contaminates the mix with broken shards, making it impossible to sell to paper mills and other recyclers.

Just like used motor oil needs to stay out of the recyclable paper, so do glass bottles and jars.

But the big new bins?

They are not a hit with some in Sequim.

Bob Mills, who lives in the Emerald Heights neighborhood, said his cart is too big for his garage and he can’t leave it outside since the homeowners’ association forbids that.

Too large

He’s a retiree who doesn’t generate near enough recyclables to fill that thing anyway.

And Mills resents having to drive his glass to some distant dump that will recycle it.

“I have heard nothing but criticism” of the 96-gallon bins, Mills said, adding that they’re three times the size of his trash bin, which he almost never fills.

Kovalenko responded that as of today, Sequim has two in-town bins for glass: at Evergreen Collision, 703 E. Washington St. behind Gwennie’s, and in the J.C. Penney parking lot at 609 W. Washington St.

They’re big gray Dumpsters, he said.

Waste Connections, meantime, has been through this recycling transition before. And Kovalenko hopes Sequim will give the carts a chance.

Five years ago, his own father, who lives in Puyallup, got the 96-gallon bin, and was not happy.

“He complained that there was no place for it; it was too big,” but a month later, after he’d done his Costco Wholesale shopping, he found it was a reasonable size.

Everything — unbroken-down cardboard boxes, plastic jugs, tall piles of newspaper — fit.

And his father can wheel that cart to the curb more easily than he can carry three separate boxes out there, Kovalenko said.

“Let’s use it for a month,” in Sequim, he suggested.

Success elsewhere

The large carts have had a tonic effect on recycling in other towns, Kovalenko added.

In Tacoma, for example, the average put-out — the amount of recyclables placed on the curb — was 30 pounds per month in 2004 including glass, when residents used the three-separate-box system.

When Tacomans were switched over to commingling paper, plastic and metal — and excluding glass — they recycled a lot more: 49 pounds a month, Kovalenko said.

Port Angeles residents, who use the one-big-bin system recycle 30 percent more per household than the Sequim residents with three boxes, he added.

The commingled bins hold more recyclables, so they don’t go into the garbage, and the result is that less ends up in the landfill, said Kovalenko.

On top of that, the lid on each recycling cart prevents all that paper from blowing into the street and turning into litter.

Sequim City Attorney Craig Ritchie negotiated the new one-bin contract with Waste Connections after the City Council expressed a desire for curbside yard-waste pickup for residents.

Since the company doesn’t have the personnel to pick up yard clippings plus trash plus three boxes of recyclables, it went to the big-cart system because, Kovalenko said, it’s faster and easier for workers.

Rates increasing

Trash-pickup rates are rising this month in Sequim, he acknowledged. The increase is due to the capital outlay for some 2,000 new 96-gallon recycling bins delivered in January.

Residents’ rates depend on the size of their regular trash bins, Kovalenko said.

For a 32-gallon bin, the monthly rate is $22.17, up from $18.62.

For a 64-gallon trash cart it’s now $24, a month, up from $20.24.

Those who use the 96-gallon garbage bin paid $22.75 before, and $26.74 now.

The recyclables go to Waste Connections’ processing plant in Tacoma, Kovalenko added.

And what goes around comes around: Some of the paper returns, he said, to be used at the Nippon Paper Industries USA mill in Port Angeles.

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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.