WINTER GARDEN, Fla. — Changes to how residents recycle in Winter Garden will take effect on Saturday, Jan. 4, after city officials announced they will no longer provide curbside pickup services after the new year.

What You Need To Know

  • Winter Garden will suspend curbside recycling pickup starting Jan. 4 

  • Residents will now be responsible for dropping off their own recyclable materials to one of four drop-off sites, which can be found on the city's website

  • Officials say cost and contamination played a role in this decision, after spending a million dollars on the recycling program last year, and only about 1% of recycling being processed correctly

  • At AMT Recycling in Winter Garden, residents can only drop off cardboard or paper products

Instead, there will be four drop-off sites to which people can take their recyclable materials. Three are in Orlando, including:

  • Orange County Landfill, 5901 Young Pine Rd., Orlando
  • Porter Transfer Station, 1326 Good Homes Rd., Orlando
  • McLeod Transfer Station, 5000 L.B. McLeod Rd., Orlando

The only location available in Winter Garden is AMT Recycling, which will only take cardboard and paper products.

It’s a change that General Manager Eric Watts said he hopes doesn’t deter people from recycling in the area. According to the city’s website, last year’s recycling program cost around $1 million. However, they found that most of the recyclable materials were not being processed by residents properly and treated as trash. The research found that only about 1% of recyclable materials were actually being recycled, saying “escalating costs, contamination” led to this decision.

“As you can see, we have a customer right now coming through,” said Watt, as he walked through the AMT plant for a close look at how drop-off and processing works. “They will come in and drop off their cardboard and their paper. We will take it to our back area where we process our cardboard and paper for processing.”

Watts has been working in the recycling industry for more than a decade and says that he has seen the desire to recycle slowly dwindling. With residents now having to drop the materials off themselves, he hopes residents will keep in mind the importance of recycling and all the positive impacts it has on our environment.

“Recycling is a science. There are always new and innovative ways to turn recyclable materials into new products. And also, it helps to be able to avoid going to the landfill,” Watts said.

Since the announcement, he said he has already seen an increase in customers dropping off cardboard materials and he doesn’t see it being an issue to continue processing residents’ cardboard and paper materials going forward.

According to the city, Jan. 4 will be the last day for curbside pickup. There is a schedule listed on the city’s website that reflects when recycling bins will be picked up and residents are encouraged to check the schedule so they know when to put out the bins.