Hennepin County is reminding residents to mind their trash this holiday season. This time of year often brings with it a fair amount of garbage, but not all of it needs to make its way to the bin.
Hennepin County's Alisa Reckinger says too often this time of year hazardous items get thrown away.
"Certain batteries can really cause problems in both the trash and the recycling carts because they can interact with other things, or get sparked and then they can actually start fires," says Reckinger.
She says common to have things like string lights that no longer work, or electronics that need to be thrown away,can be brought to a Hennepin County drop-off facility for proper recycling or disposal.
Another difficult issue is all of that gift wrapping or decorations the holiday season produces, and it's almost always trash.
Reckinger says she's encouraging people to think before they throw when it comes to recyclable wrapping paper.
"Recycling process uses a lot of machines and wrapping paper gets balled up," says Reckinger. "It's going to maybe register it as a plastic bottle and it's maybe not going to see it as paper. So that's why we also say you need to flatten that paper. If you are using wrapping paper that's more like plain paper that would be recycled."
She says unfortunately most wrapping paper is considered trash, but items like gift bags, boxes, and bows are great to save and reuse next year.
St. Paul and Ramsey County have similar programs. You can find out more about that here.