UPDATE: St. Cloud City Council Approves New Recycling System

ST. CLOUD -- The City of St. Cloud will be switching to a new recycling system that includes Radio Frequency Identification tags (RFID).

The Council voted unanimously Monday to buy 16,500 recycling carts from Houston-Galveston Area Contract.

The carts hold 95 gallons of recycled product. The new system will cost about $1.1 million which will come from a reserve fund already included in the recycling budget.

The new carts are the same length and width as the current green bins but have a greater height.

Each cart will contain an RFID tag which has the cart serial number, size, customer address and GPS coordinates of the cart.

The City says the new system will increase recycling participation, convenience and make the operation more efficient by reducing the manual seven truck recycling system from a two sort operation into a three truck single sort auto-load system.

The city will now be able to pick up numbers one through seven plastic and track who is using the recycling service.

The City says you have the option to keep the current green bin for personal use or return it to the city to be discarded.