When people recycle, part of the necessary effort is to put the paper, plastic and metals in the right bins. But often they don’t, and that leads to contamination fees.

Clay Warner, the recycling manager for Garten in Salem, told KOIN 6 News he receives load after load of recyclables around Marion County. But every day there’s work to be done removing the contaminated items, many of which have no business being in a recycling bin.

“The bags you get at the grocery store, those should never go in. That is the worst thing that can go into my system,” Warner said. “It wraps around the shafts and takes hours to fix.”

That forces franchises to issue contamination fees to fix the problem, and those fees could be as much as $15 per customer.

Kristan Mitchell with the Oregon Refuse and Recycling Association said this happens in Marion County — and all over the region.

“Until you have clean materials, all you’re really doing is collecting recycling, but not really recycling,” she said. “We’ve been dealing with a loss of a market that is an international disruption, that is felt very locally in our collection programs.”

Separating the bad from the good will help with recycling efforts and stop the contamination fees in an effort to fix the problem long term.

“We view our customers as partners in this process, too,” Mithcell said. “We view this as a shared responsibility in these programs. Recycling is important to all Oregonians, and we just want to make sure we have a resilient and sustainable system going forward.”