Removing recyclables from bins illegal in E.L.

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If East Lansing residents want to raise money by collecting recyclable bottles, they’ll have to look elsewhere than the city’s recycling bins.

A ban on removing items from recycling bins has been around since 1994, but recently has been posted at the recycling site as a way to put people at ease, said Dave Smith, an environmental specialist for East Lansing.

“We’ve never had an issue with it before, but recently we’ve noticed a lot of people going through bins,” Smith said. “We’re getting complaints from patrons over concerns with security.”

The main reason for the ordinance is for safety, as people could be injured while going through bins, and to make residents feel more comfortable, he said.

“People dropping off junk mail are concerned about people going through and taking anything out of there that could lead to identity theft,” Smith said.

Physiology senior Corrinne Thomas, who is part of Eco, MSU’s environmental group, said that if people were really concerned about identity theft, they should just black out their names and information before putting items in the recycling bins.

There are pros and cons to this sort of ordinance, Thomas said.

“If someone wants to read a magazine or if they want to collect bottles for whatever reason, they shouldn’t be inhibited,” she said. “It’s much more environmental to reuse (an item) as opposed to just recycling it.”

But residents shouldn’t be concerned about this, said Todd Sneathen, East Lansing’s director of Public Works.

“If someone takes a few cardboard boxes or magazines from the container, we don’t typically confront them,” he said in a letter on the city’s Public Response forum. “The language is in place so if a problem occurs, we have a method to resolve it.”

East Lansing resident Arthur Slabosky said that while it seemed reasonable to try to prevent people from running a kind of wholesale operation by pulling out the valuable things from the bin, he is not comfortable with the fact that residents may be punished for a relatively minor offense.

“Whenever officers have power, they may exercise it,” he said. “It makes me uneasy to know that the power is there.”

To help East Lansing residents recycle more easily, a second year-round drop-off site has opened at 841 Timberlane St., directly across from the East Lansing Public Schools Administration Building.

“It’s pretty cool they’ve got something on that end of town (now),” said East Lansing resident Susan Schmidt. “If the whole point is people want to do good things for the environment, if you have to drive so far, you’re using gas, polluting the air — it’s kind of ridiculous.”

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