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The Offi cial City Newsletter for Arden Hills Residents August/September 2017 Going to the Fair? Arden Hills has two Park and Ride sites where Minnesota State Fair (August 24-September 4) goers can park their cars and catch the bus to the fairgrounds. One is on Harriet Avenue west of Lexington; the other is on New Brighton Road just west and south of Beckman Avenue. These sites are popular; often the parking lots fi ll and drivers look for parking on the street. Before you park, be sure to look for “no parking” signs on streets surrounding the Park and Ride sites. Ramsey County’s Arden Hills Yard Waste site will soon join the other six county sites as an organics recycling collection point beginning in early October. Keeping kitchen scraps and other organic waste in compostable bags and dropping them off at the Yard Waste collection site is a way to be good stewards of our environment. Recently, the other six county sites have all implemented organics recycling, and Arden Hills staff have received many phone calls requesting the addition of this service to our collection site as well. Ramsey County provided information about the program to the City Council at its May 15 work session. The Planning Commission considered the request at its July 7 meeting and recommended implementation. On July 24, the City Council approved the implementation of organic waste recycling in Arden Hills. The yard waste sites have a designated area for organics collection with one or more covered containers where materials are placed. The County sites are always staffed by a site monitor to provide quality control. Collection containers are kept closed when yard waste sites are not in use and are serviced once a week by Ramsey County’s contractor, Waste Management. Acceptable materials include food waste/ scraps and various types of soiled or non-recyclable paper. To reduce odor and wildlife problems, residents are required to put organics in compostable bags, provided free of charge by the County, before plac- ing them into the containers. Dry paper products, such as pizza boxes and used paper towels and tissues, can be placed directly into the collec- tion container. Cups, plates, utensils, and bags are allowed if they have the “Compostable” logo from the Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI) or Cedar Grove on the item or packaging to ensure it is compostable. Go to RamseyRecycles.com for a list of unac- cepted items. During the winter months, the yard waste sites are only open on weekends. However, data collected by Ramsey County shows that the number of visits for organics drop-off at other sites in the winter remains similar to the regular season. Residents are encouraged to drop off organic mate- rial on a schedule of at least once per week since the compostable bags can begin to decompose after a week or so under certain conditions. This helps prevent issues in the household and at the receiving end. Many homeowners now compost food scraps and yard trimmings at home as a way to convert waste to usable compost. For those who cannot or do not choose this option, the Ramsey County Yard Waste sites offer an excellent alternative. Organics recycling comes to Arden Hills Household textile recycling coming this fall, tooAnother recycling opportunity is com- ing to Arden Hills residents later this fall. Worn clothing and household textiles can be recycled curbside after the contract has been worked out with a for-profi t com- pany called Simple Recycling. This organization provides the bags to residents and picks them up on trash/recy- cling day at no cost to the homeowners or the City. Much of this material will be reused or repurposed. If this is not possible, it will be recycled, keeping millions of pounds of textiles out of the landfi lls. Watch for additional information about this important program as it becomes available.