Middletown residents are going green – with a little help from new-age technology.
Recycle Coach is an app designed to distribute garbage, bulk and recycling information to residents of municipalities who have registered with the system.
This system will allow for individualized access to collection schedules, community events and provides the proper disposal process for safely discarding unwanted items.
Lory Hubbard, Assistant Director of the Department of Public Works and Engineering in Middletown, said the app will encourage residents in the 58-square-mile town to “streamline” a proper recycling process.
Hubbard said the app, which was contracted by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, is available for residents to either download on their mobile devices or access from a desktop computer.
Hubbard said Recycle Coach users first need to select their recycling zone (North Middletown or South Middletown) based on their geographic location.
Once the correct zone is selected, corresponding information, including a customized calendar which notes garbage, recycling, and bulk pick up days, as well as Monmouth County events including paper shredding days, a notification will appear on a users’ screen.
Alerts can be enabled to remind users of upcoming events and waste collection days. The app will advise a user if there are changes in collection days due to holidays or inclement weather, she said.
“Our main goal is to make recycling easier for our residents,” Hubbard said. “The Recycle Coach app will assist in this process. The searchable tool in the app, which guides what to recycle and where, takes the guesswork out of recycling. We worked with Recycle Coach to incorporate the information from our current Comprehensive Recycling Chart into the program.”
Hubbard said officials from Recycle Coach have began introducing the service to each of New Jersey’s 565 municipalities.
Speaking on behalf its residents, Hubbard said that the Middletown community is excited to make use of the free environmentally-sound app. The service currently has 1,800 subscribers, she said.
“The app is quite user-friendly,” she said.
Recycle Coach is available for download via the Apple Store or Google Play.