Carters Required to Collect Garbage in Yellow Bags

Members of the Southold Town Board will host an informational meeting on Thursday at 7 p.m. at Town Hall to explain the mandates of Southold’s Solid Waste Management Plan requiring residents to separate recycling and carters to collect garbage in Town yellow bags. Representatives from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation will explain the state mandates that the Town is required to enforce.

This past July, Southold Town Supervisor Scott Russell and board members said that they would consider options to the yellow bag system, which has been in place since 1993 in order to encourage residents to recycle instead of throw everything away and to comply with state-mandated recycling goals, because of the influx of private carters in town over the years who do not use yellow bags.

“The state expects us to comply to recycling requirements, and we are trying to find new options to meet state needs,” Russell said in July. "The town does not have the unilateral right to do away with something because we don’t like it — we have to replace it with something else that will helps meet the same goals of reducing, reusing and recycling.”

Since creating a Russell has said that there is no way around doing away with yellow bags, not only to generate revenue but to continue to comply with the state, and that all carters must collect garbage in yellow bags.