Statewide recycling in Pennsylvania began in 1988 with the Municipal Waste Planning Recycling and Waste Reduction Act.

            According to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, the program grew over the years to include more that 11.6 million residents and today at least 94 percent of the state's population have access to recycling. About 79 percent have convenient access to recycling through about 1,050 curb-side pickup programs. There are 870 drop-off programs available that extend recycling to the greatest number of communities.

            You may be doing your best at home or work to recycle, but are those items being recycled or going to the landfill?

            When China, one of the world's largest importers of recyclable materials, announced that they would tightened the standards for the waste it would accept, its imports of solid waste dropped by more than 50 percent.  We, in the United States, relied on China to sell recyclables to.

            There are still markets here but, they too are starting to feel the crunch of what recycling processors will take when it comes to "clean" or "garbage" recyclables.  We need to know the difference. 

            In most cases, if even a small amount of "dirty" recyclable items are found among a batch, waste managers might not be able to find buyers for the materials and contaminated loads could be sent to the landfill.  

            Below are six recommendations, published by environmental journalist Livia Albeck-Ripka that can help you keep your recyclables from becoming garbage.

            A disposable coffee cup might seem like it can be recycled, but most single-use cups are lined with a fine film of polyethylene, which makes the cups liquid-proof but also difficult and expensive to reprocess because the materials have to be separated.

            Pizza boxes are among the most common offenders when it comes to contamination.  The problem is that oil often seeps into the cardboard. The oil cannot be separated from the fiber, making that material less valuable, and less marketable. 

            After China banned used plastics this year, many municipalities in the United States no longer accept plastics numbered 3 to 7, which can include things like yogurt cups, butter tubs and vegetable oil bottles. Look at the bottom of a container for a number inside a triangle to see what type it is.  Without China, there is little market for these types of plastic. 

            Another contamination culprit is food residue: scraps of food in a plastic tray or those few drops of bad milk at the bottom of the jug.  Washing out food scraps from recyclables can be just as important as putting the right thing in the recycling bin.

            Plastic bags create a nightmare for waste managers by plugging up machinery. So remember to dump your recyclables out of the plastic bag when putting them in the recycling bin. Some areas do offer plastic bag drop-offs, which send them to special facilities for recycling. Other cities and states have moved to tax, limit or ban the use of plastic bags altogether.

            Dirty Diapers! In some cases, people might think that a dirty diaper should be recyclable because it is mostly made of plastic but, diapers are made of a number of materials, and usually more than one type of plastic. Of course, once they are used, they are also filled with human waste.  Dirty one-use diapers are not considered recyclable and are best put straight in the trash.

            A thousand residents could recycle "clean" items loaded onto a truck, but one "garbage" recycler sends the whole load to the landfill.