text: Many residents and businesses in the unincorporated county take their trash and recycling to county transfer stations. Waste hauling companies take the trash they collect to county transfer stations as well, but their recycling goes to a sorting facility and then to private companies for marketing to manufacturers.
  Snohomish County Solid Waste Superintendent Jon Greninger said transfer stations have received more large items than usual, like old furniture.
  People throw their trash onto the tipping floor to be loaded into a compactor at the Airport Road Recycling & Transfer Station on Nov. 24 in Everett. Photo by Olivia Vanni/The Herald (Everett)
  They’re also seeing more customers. In October alone, almost 9,500 more people brought loads of waste than during the same period last year, Greninger said. That could be because residents are dropping off extras that won’t fit in curbside bins, or making a dump run with materials from a house project.
  Curbside haulers say they’ve seen increases in a few specific items, and they likely aren’t surprising.
  In addition to more yard waste, haulers picked up more construction debris, cardboard boxes and takeout containers compared to previous years.
  The county has also seen a wave of residents recycling latex paint: an increase of 71% since July, Greninger said.
  Many are from Amazon orders and other online shopping, said Juyeong Choi, a professor at the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University studying how the pandemic is impacting solid waste processes.
  More residents are placing large pieces of cardboard outside their bins, either because they’re too big to fit or because their bins are full, Republic Services’ Hutchinson said.
  When cardboard gets wet, it becomes trash. If even 10% of the cardboard is saturated with water, it’s problematic in the recycling process and can contaminate other material, he said.
  Changing eating habits are also reflected in our garbage. More plastic clamshell containers commonly used for takeout food orders have been showing up in curbside bins, Spade said. Those containers aren’t actually recyclable.
  Even if a container has a recycling logo on it, processing facilities may not keep it. That’s because there’s no processing market for the material, even if it’s technically recyclable.
  “A lot of companies say their plastic is recyclable,” Spade said, “But you can’t find a buyer to take it from you.”
  Rubatino takes its recycling to a sorting facility in Bothell run by Waste Management. The facility can’t recycle anything that’s #6-type plastic, including plastic bags, plastic egg cartons and takeout containers. That means most takeout containers should go straight in the trash.
  Then there are the blue-and-white padded envelopes that some Amazon orders arrive in. Those aren’t recyclable either. You have to take them to a drop-off location that will collect them. Only about 4% of that material actually gets recycled, said Conrad MacKerron, senior vice president of environmental advocacy nonprofit As You Sow.