Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Eight forty two thirteen ten WIBA, Madison in the morning, Katie,
what are we listening to here?
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Some garbage?
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Well done? Well done? Why is Katie playing garbage this morning?
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Well?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Brian Johnson with the City of Madison, he is the
city's recycling coordinator, joins us.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Brian, how you doing this morning?
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I'm doing okay, and I do appreciate playing garbage. Excellent choice.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Yeah, was good.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
We had like, we named an electric garbage truck here
on the east side of Madison last year, and I
was really hoping we were going to pick Butcher surely
as the names of those two things. They didn't win
the vote, but you know, that's the way that goes.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Oh man, I remember that campaign that was That was
a lot of fun. And of course Brian Johnson comes
to us from the City of Madison. Of course he
is the city's recycling coordinator. Full disclosure, Brian, you and
I were hanging out doing some recording yesterday and we
started talking and I said, you know, we gotta get
you on the air because there's a lot of questions
(00:57):
about and a lot of very fascinating things about about
recycling and how the system works. Kind of a behind
the scenes thing. But first and foremost, Brian, let's talk
a little bit about about you. And so for folks
that are not familiar with the city's recycling program.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Or familiar with what your role is, let's talk a
little bit about that. Brian.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Yeah, so my job, I'm the recycling coordinator and public
information officer for the Streets Division. So it's a varied responsibility,
sort of like a Swiss army knife thing if people
recognize me at all, because I'm usually the person on
the morning news talking about like snowplow stuff. But it's
also with this recycling information trying to get that stuff
(01:37):
out so people are putting the right things in those
carts every other week to get them picked up. So
we're doing that safely and correctly. And that's part of
the role too, working with our large item pick up.
It's a little of this, a little of that. It's
it keeps you busy and keeps the hairline receding.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
So that's yeah, you've got well comparatively, you've got a
full head of hair. So I'd love a little bit
about your background. You're You're grew up in the Midwest.
Now you're not a Madison native. But but you're from
the area, aren't you.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Yeah, well, I grew up in like this, the general
Saint Louis area technically Illinois, but not Chicago, but like
just right around the Saint Louis area. So like Cardinals fan,
but don't hold against me. But they you know, they
throw you out of the region if you're not you know,
but the Yeah. And so I've been to Madison for
over fifteen years now, so I think I'm about as
local as anybody else is really that it comes to Madison,
(02:27):
fall in love with the place, and then stays here,
mixing my home. So I feel like a problem Madisonian
even though I'm not like born and raised here.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
One of the one of the things I when I
first much like you, although I grew up a little
closer outside of Milwaukee. One of my first observations of
when I moved to Madison was there's very few cemeteries here.
And I think it has a lot to do with
the fact that most people traditionally would would you know,
when you pass away, you'd be buried where you you know,
where your family is, which oftentimes is out of times
(02:55):
kind of kind of reinforces just a what a mixing pot.
We are here in Maddie. And then speaking of mixing pots,
unfortunately some folks like to use their recycling bin as
a bit of a mixing pot.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
And let's talk about I know it's there's.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Why I get know it right there, professional transition there
sean well done exactly.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Let's talk about what and kind of how, because you
do want to even though they are bins, you want
to have what's inside of them somewhat organized, don't you.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah, because what belongs in the recycling cart. There are
just certain things that belong in there. You know. It's
the bottles, jugs, it's the paper flattened cardboard boxes, including
greedy pizza boxes. Now that's something new. When it comes
to items that are glass, it's just bottles and jars.
It's not every kind of glass thing that's in there,
in aluminum cans, tin cans, things like that. So it's
(03:44):
not everything. This plastic doesn't belong in the recycling cart
because the sorting systems on the back end can't reclaim
all that stuff out of there. And also there has
to be somebody on the ultimate back end of the
stuff that wants to be able to reclaim these things
and make some new thing out of it that they
can then turn sell back into the market. That's the
economy of how that recycling works. And so them even
(04:06):
though like one of the things we see in the
recycling carts that don't belong there is that clothing like
clothes and shoes, like, do not put that in that
green recycling cart just doesn't have a place that actually
knots up a lot of the machinery. And I think
people do that because maybe they think called polyesters plastic,
does it belong in there, and they kind of value
it and so they feel bad about putting it in
(04:27):
the trash, But like, donat that stuff. You know, there's
other ways, like actually clothing does have an ability to
be recycled through the right places, but it's made into
like industrial rags or could be made into like punching bag,
the intilation kind of stuff like that, but it's not
your cart stuff though it doesn't belong there. It's like
you take that to the the Good Wills of Saint Vinnie's,
(04:48):
the Boomerangs, the Dane County Humane Society like that has
the thrift store like those kind of places, but not
but not the carts.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
And Brian One, And I know one of the cool
things do you talk about about, you know, putting those
those like clothing items to good use. You guys actually
have a whole section and have partnered up with with
a bunch of the organizations here in town for folks
that are looking to donate their clothes. You guys have
a great section on your website to do that. One
of the areas that I always get confused about now.
(05:15):
A couple of years ago, like I think a lot
of middle aged guys went out and bought a three
D printer, so you start learning about different types of
plastics and pla and all these other things I still
get confused about, like recycled plastics and there's like a
numbering system. How is there what's kind of the useful
guidance on on like what numbers of plastic are are recyclable?
(05:36):
And is there like an easy rule of thumb to
kind of memorize some of that stuff?
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Really, I wouldn't if for like the general like rule
of thumb with the public stuff, I wouldn't get too
hung up on the number stuff. The plastics is super complicated,
and it's even the plastics that we're going to see
as consumers are typically one through seven. But if you
really dig into it, like it's gets way more complicated
than that when it comes to like laboratory plastics and
on on no, no, no, on and so them. If it
(06:02):
really comes down to like it's things like it's the bottles,
is the jug of like laundry tubs, dairy containers, the
and when it comes to like the at the grocery
store in the produce section, the boxes that hold the
or spinach and stuff like that, or they're dairy tubs.
If it has like a handle, a neck, a box
(06:22):
that closes, that kind of feels that's not too rigid.
So I'm not talking like a kitty litter bucket or
anything like that that's too big, that's too rigid. But typically,
but to get to the numbers, it's one through seven.
Plastic containers is what we is what we say, But
it's the container part that's important and if but even
that's kind of nerdy and complicated when you think, how
(06:44):
do you see those little numbers and they get they're embossed.
It's so hard to see if it's like a milk jug,
a pop bottle, if it's a laundry tub. If it's
the other kind of plastic bottle. If it's clean, empty
and dry, that's gonna be okay. I mean there's like
you wouldn't put a motor oil bottle in your recycling
card if you're a change your own oil type of
person because the oil stays case o. The you have
(07:06):
to put that in the trash. But the we try
to make it as simple as we can because the
stuff in our life is always changing. Recycling rules have
been the same for a long time. I mean, we
try to keep adding items like the can, like the
pizza boxes. We can recycle hot and cold takeout cups
now here in Madison, we've been lucky to add that.
But the stuff in our life is always changing, and
(07:28):
that's what makes it feel complicated. So that's why you
have to list like it puts a lot of pressure
on consumers to know what to do with this always
changing stuff in our lives. So you really do have
to look this up by going to like you live
in the City of Madison, going to the City of
Madison's like recycling website, or picking up a copy of
our recyclopedia from a library, or giving us a call.
(07:51):
If you're uncertain or if you don't live in Madison,
like going to your local sources for this information, because
they're going to be the one that's going to tell
you the right thing to do with this stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
This morning with Brian Johnson, he is Madison's recycling coordinator.
Brian and I we could probably talk for hours on
some of this stuff.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
There's a lot to it.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
But I'm chatty too, so I'm not going to be
your favorite.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
So that's awesome. I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
And one of the things I do have to ask
you about, because I think it's an important one, is
batteries and whether it's the trash can or whether it's recycling.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
You really don't want to be doing that, do you.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
No, we want to bring them to a recycling site
to here in this if you're a city in Madison resident,
you can recycle your batteries for free. Just bring them
to a drop off site. We have on our website
explaining like the special handling to do with like lithium
batteries and also nickel batteries. But lithium batteries are particularly
worrisome because there are a cause of a lot of fires,
(08:44):
especially if people handling them wrong. It's a big problem
in the recycling industry in general, where these see a
lot of truck fires and industry big facilities have burned
down because of lithium batteries that sneak in to the
recycling streamer doesn't belong, and it could be something as
small as one of those greeting cards that light up
(09:05):
and seeing those are often powered by a little buttons
that'll lithium battery, or someone throwing a cell phone mindlessly
in the wrong cart. But most of what we recycle
is paper, and when those lithium batteries get damage, they
spark and if that could catch on fire pretty easily.
Like here in Madison earlier this year, we had a truck,
one of our recycling trucks caught on fire. The technically,
(09:27):
the officially the cause of the fire was undetermined, but
they did find a computer mixed in with all of
the other burn debris, and so they that's a really
big causic. It's a worldwide problem in the recycling industry
of these little batteries. So again that's one more thing
that's a little tougher on our consumers is handling those
little batteries. The right way. So if you're Madison, just
(09:48):
bring it to the drop off site. There's other places
that do it too, Like a lot of hardware stores
do rechargeable batteries. There's like other private stores that will
do a battery recycling where they might charge. But so
much of a our digital stuff has these in there.
We just got to do it the right way because
it could be dangerous.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
It's really and it's really important. I know you've got
a great list up at Cityomadison dot com and the
recycling thing about you know, some of the band items
and real quick we've got We've got just about a
minute here, Brian. I do want to ask you was
kind of how that is handled? Is is it's It's
obviously these things are very important to keep this stuff out.
But but with with Madison, with the recycling program in
(10:27):
the streets vision, you guys generally are pretty it's more
about education, isn't it than than than going after folks.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Yeah, we're not trying to find people who know, like
we've had this stubbornly high contamination rate. But what I
mean by that is just stuff in the recycling cart
that doesn't belong. So that's the clothing I talked about earlier,
or like shower curtains or just bags of trash that
you'll see sometimes in the recycling cart. For the past
few months, we've had people like picking in carts just
trying to get just to try to get people's attention,
(10:56):
because it's our attention. There's a thousand different places nowadays,
and so like, well, how can we get people's attention. Well,
if we leave a little card on the cart saying hey,
there's a problem here and not pick up the recycling,
we can hopefully get chokes attention to fix that issue,
and then if they call us, we'll come back. We're
not trying to find people who are punish people or
make people feel bad. It's just we want this stuff
(11:17):
to be right because it actually saves less costs because
all the trash that gets in that recycling that cost
us extra to have to get rid of that. And
plus if it keeps it cleaner, that helps that selling
of recyclables, like I talked about earlier. And if sometimes
some of the stuff can be dangerous too, which we
also clearly don't want in there because that's terrible for
the workers. It's just it has serious repercussion. I guess
(11:41):
I could say so. If you do happen to see
your cart carded, it has like a silly little frowny
face sticker and a card hanging off of it. It's like,
it's not a fine, it's not nothing. Just fix the
problem on the cart. Give us a call, we'll come back,
or if you have any questions, call us email us.
We're here to help. That's what we're here to do.
We're a city service. We're here to help, so give
us a ring will help you out.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Brian Johnson, City's recycling coordinator, thank you so much for
your time and that great information this morning. You have
a fantastic weekend, and don't be a stranger because we're
going to talk soon.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Indeed you too, Shan, thank you.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
We've got Vicky McKenna and she's got a chance for
you to win one thousand dollars next right here on
thirteen ten.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Wiba