Boyle County Solid Waste and Recycling has released a new app that teaches people what they do and don’t take for recycling.

The app is called Boyle County Recycling, and is available for Apple and Android devices.

Waste Management Director Angela Muncy came up with the idea for the app as a way to educate people. She used ReCollect for its design and programming, which is an app design company specifically focused on trash / recycling apps.

The app has a search feature called the “Waste Wizard,” which allows users to search any item to find out what to do with it. The main page features popular searches like clothes, styrofoam packaging, broken glass, and more.

The app also has a sorting game for trash / recycling. People are given an item to throw up, and they have to determine the correct place to put it. The five options are garbage, recycling – commingled, recycling – paper, yard waste, and convenience center drop off.

Once they correctly sort six items, people can pick a decoration for a park that they create over the game. The game has five levels with six items each. People can print a certificate when they win.

Boyle County Solid Waste and Recycling covers most of Boyle County except for Danville and parts of Perryville that’s covered by Republic Services. The county has different things they accept for recycling than Republic.

“We get a lot of phone calls, and we have been trying for several years to make people aware of the things we don’t take, because we do get a lot of trash, even though it is getting better. This is a way they can look it up for themselves and not worry about having to call,” Muncy said.

Below are some examples of what Boyle County does and does not accept.

• Boyle County does not accept plastics 3-7, which includes common food plastics like cottage cheese or sour cream bowls, yogurt containers, plastic cups and lids, and other things like plastic furniture.

“We don’t take them because there’s not really an active market that’s close enough for us to collect and have them shipped to,” Muncy said. “If we were a place like New York City … or where you’ve got barges like around northern Kentucky, you have a bigger market for them, but as of right now we’re just too far away.”

They do accept plastics 1 and 2, which includes bottled drinks, laundry detergent, milk jugs, shampoo bottles, and other things like metal food cans. These types of things can go in people’s commingled bins.

• However, paper needs to be kept separate from commingled recycling. Muncy said if paper gets wet, it’s trash.

The best thing people can do for paper is take it to one of Boyle County’s convenience centers. Each center has special cans out for paper. The cans are closed lid, and can’t be opened unless an operator opens them.

If people want to put paper with the rest of their recycling, they should put it in a bag to keep it dry.

• The big thing Boyle County does not accept is glass. Muncy said it’s not economically feasible for them to process glass for recycling.

“You have to have a pulverizer, which requires a separate room, which I don’t have the room here for that,” Muncy explained. “The second is by the time you pulverize the glass, you may get $8 a ton. For the damage it can cause, the machinery, it’s just not economically feasible right now.”

All glass should go in the garbage. Broken glass should be bagged separately and thoroughly.

• The county also does not accept TVs, which need to go to the dump. However, the recycling center does take electronic scrap, which includes anything with a plug except for TVs.

Recycling rules for Republic Services in Danville are different. They do accept glass, plastics 1-7, and any type of paper.

Muncy said since the county doesn’t accept as much recycling as other companies, she wants people to be aware of why they don’t take certain things.

“We don’t want to waste your time recycling,” Muncy said. “I want everyone to know that this is how we recycle, this is what we can get top dollar for, and this is how we need to do it.”

Anyone can drop off recycling at the county’s Convenience Centers. They are Gose Pike, Alum Springs, Mitchellsburg, Perryville and Forkland Convenience Centers.

Muncy said they do different things to educate people on what to recycle, including recycling awareness week. She said over time, people in the county are getting better about not recycling trash.

“They are getting better, I’d say we have a good success rate, I would give them a good 75%,” Muncy said.

She hopes by the end of the year, they will add a calendar to the app with both Boyle and Danville’s trash and recycling schedules. The calendar will also have weather and holiday alerts.

Other information about how to recycle is on the county’s website at boylecountyky.gov/190/Solid-Waste-Recycling