How about a little trash talk?

by Jed Tate
San Juan County Landfill Manager
My first thought, this is another crazy sports column exploring the communication of athletes in all sports.
Trash talk is often used in sports, but this is a column that will be dedicated to talking about actual trash or waste as it is referred to in the Municipal Waste industry.
I am Jed Tate, the San Juan County Landfill Manager. We are introducing this column as an informative way to help educated all our San Juan County residents to the difficulties and challenges we face of waste disposal in our county.
Our purpose is that we believe through a better-informed public we can help control costs and waste practices that could be considered either health risks or safety risks to all of San Juan County.
I will be contributing information and tops on a regular basis to improve the overall waste structure in the county.
This month, I would like to introduce a pilot program that we have started in a few locations in the county.
The program is Recycling. We acknowledge that it has had some experimental programs in various locations in the past that failed for various reasons. One being that those picking up the recycling were not actually sending the collected recyclables to a recycler.
The San Juan County landfill has begun a cooperation agreement with Canyonlands Solid Waste Authority, and Moab Solutions to combine all our recyclables together to allow for a more efficient and economical dispersion to the recyclable markets.
This will help us ensure that all recyclables go to a market in a timely manner and are not diverted back into the landfill. This helps reduce landfill space used to allow for longer longevity of the county’s landfill. We have hopes to eventually be able to expand these programs to the entire county.
Currently, the pilot program is active in La Sal, Bluff, and the main landfill below White Mesa. You would need to sort your recyclables into bins for each type of waste.
Currently La Sal and Bluff accepts Cardboard, #1 PET Plastics, #2 Natural HDPE Plastics, #2 color HDPE plastics, #5 HDPE plastics, aluminum cans, and steel/tin cans.
The landfill accepts all the above products with the addition of glass bottles/jars, and mixed paper.
If your waste is sorted, you can drop it off at these locations free of charge to begin the program. Non-recyclables would still be charged to drop off. 
Recycling is not without cost. Our hope is that keeping a percentage of waste out of the landfill will help offset the cost and keep the expenditure at a minimum.
We hope to be able to expand this to all our communities in the future, and look forward to establishing an acceptable program that will be lasting and beneficial to our county.