Blue bin snafu leaves El Paso woman without place to put her recyclables

EL PASO, Texas -- Evelyn Rojo was out of town during her neighborhood's trash collection day. She says her son took her bins out Monday night, expecting their trash and recyclable items to be collected.

When she returned home, she and her son looked everywhere and could not find her blue recycle bin.

"You can see there's boxes there that need to be taken care of, and I don't have a bin," Rojo said.

She says she called the cities Environmental Services department and asked how she could locate her bin. Rojo says they told her it had been thrown away with her items during collection.

Rojo had been looking for her bin for three weeks and was upset Environmental Services never notified her of the incident.

"How come I haven't got a letter or call from someone letting me know what happened," Rojo said.

She was upset but was hopeful that the bin would be replaced. "We will replace it so that made me happy the thing is that he said 'but, you will have to take a class'," Rojo said.

Environmental Services told Rojo they could replace her bin free of charge, but she must take a recycling class first.

"I felt like I was being punished," Rojo said.

Astrid Bunner, Managing Assistant Director for Environmental Services said: "Well the way we look at our program is if you don't have a blue bin you have to take a class you have to opt-in into the program because the program is voluntary you don't have to recycle."