Good news on the sustainability front

Chart via nooga.com

The City of Chattanooga has secured a contract that will allow it to expand its collection of plastics for recycling to include most plastic items.

Recyclable plastics No. 1 through No. 7 can now officially be picked up during regular curbside collections or dropped off at any of the city's recycling centers, officials said.

The expansion will also simplify household recycling programs by reducing the need for additional sorting, according to Justin Holland, sanitation manager for the city of Chattanooga.

It will also promote an increase in what Holland calls landfill diversion.

"We have just reduced a lot of what we had been calling garbage," Holland said.

Before the expansion, the city was sending items such as shopping bags, medicine bottles, yogurt containers, egg cartons and CD jewel cases to the landfill.

Now, those items, along with plastics No. 1 and No. 2, such as soda bottles, milk jugs and shampoo bottles, will be sorted and sold through an ongoing contract with the Orange Grove Center.