Hefty brand expands recycling program to Lake County

LAKE FOREST – Hefty brand will offer the Hefty ReNew program to nine communities and five townships in Lake County in October in partnership with Lakeshore Recycling Systems and Solid Waste Agency of Lake County.

Hefty ReNew is a program that makes it easy to collect hard-to-recycle plastics and offers residents a convenient way to divert more plastic waste from landfills.

How does it work? Simply fill the orange bag with accepted items and when the bag is full, tie it up tightly and put it directly in your recycling bin or cart alongside your loose recyclables. That’s it. The orange bag makes things easy because accepted items are printed directly on the bag. The orange color is essential for recycling processors to identify the materials you collected so they go to the right place and not the landfill.

The recycling center separates the orange bags from other materials and sends them to facilities that bring new life to hard-to-recycle plastics by converting them into useful products, including building and construction materials and lumber. Learn more about the end markets for materials collected through the Hefty ReNew program at HeftyReNew.com.

Officials also said it’s important to continue to follow the usual guidelines for other recyclables collected by LRS.

Starting in October, the Hefty ReNew program will be offered in nine municipalities in Lake County – Bannockburn, Deerfield, Gurnee, Highland Park, Highwood, Lake Villa, Lincolnshire, North Chicago and Riverwoods – and the unincorporated areas of five townships – Avon, Moraine, Shields, Warren and West Deerfield.

The program’s orange bags will be available through local retailers starting in October. Residents will be able to buy additional orange bags at Jewel-Osco, Menards, Sunset Foods or Ace Hardware.

Residents in participating areas can request a free Hefty ReNew starter kit at HeftyReNew.com and start collecting materials now for recycling.

“It’s exciting to introduce the Hefty ReNew program to Lake County,” said Carlee Bilello, senior marketing director for the Hefty ReNew program at Reynolds Consumer Products. “Providing more people with the opportunity to divert waste from landfills and improve their community is our mission and we’re able to bring it here with our partnerships with LRS and SWALCO.”

Developed in collaboration with Dow and other program supporters, the Hefty ReNew program began in 2018 and has continued to expand, diverting more than 2,800 tons of hard-to-recycle plastics from landfills across Georgia, Idaho, Nebraska, Tennessee, Arizona and Ohio.

To learn more about the program, go to HeftyReNew.com.