NASHUA – Face masks and gloves are now ending up in the city’s recycling, causing problems for officials.

Public Relations Administrator Lauren Byers with the Nashua Division of Public Works said the materials are not recyclable, emphasizing the importance of keeping the city’s recycling stream clean. Rather than putting these items in a recycling bin, people should instead be discarding them in the garbage. Byers said the issue began to occur within the last couple weeks as the weather has gotten nicer, drawing more people out who are wearing masks and gloves. While Byers said it is wonderful that people are taking these precautions, they cannot recycle any of those items.

“There’s a whole bunch of reasons why these are problems, but the biggest is the material in itself is not recyclable, and therefore it has to be moved from the stream and that’s costly and time consuming,” Byers said.

Similar to the ongoing issue of plastic bags winding up in the city’s recycling, these items are now causing the same problem in that they get caught up in machinery.

Superintendent of Solid Waste Jeff Lafleur said the masks and gloves get wrapped up in the machinery at the facility the city ships its recycling to. That then results in the facility having to stop the machinery and cut the items out to get things working again.

“If there’s too much contamination in our recycling loads then we could get rejected where we wouldn’t be able to ship our stuff to them,” Lafleur said.

Lafleur also said the issue with the items ending up mixed in with the recycling has been gradually increasing. If an employee who goes around the city collecting people’s recycling is to notice these materials in a bin, Lafleur said typically they will have to leave the load there and contact the resident and let them know what was wrong.

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Adam Urquhart may be contacted at 594-1206, or at aurquhart@nashuatelegraph.com.