Rumpke, Ohio's recycling leader, announced today that carton containers are now accepted in its residential and commercial recycling programs.

"Rumpke is committed to growing recycling in the region," said Jeff Rumpke, vice president. "We built our new Cincinnati recycling facility with the ability to handle more recyclables and to process new types of material. We are always out there searching both domestically and internationally to identify new manufacturers that are willing to take and use recyclables from our region."

Types of carton containers now accepted include juice, milk, soy milk, soup, broth, egg substitute and wine cartons.

Rumpke partnered with the Carton Council on the project. The Council supplied $454,525 in grant funding to help purchase an optical scanner that uses infrared technology to identify and sort cartons from the recycling stream. In total Rumpke's new processing system includes six optical scanners, each with a price tag of nearly $1 million.

Rumpke and the Carton Council will also partner in the coming months to promote the new acceptable items to the 4.5 million people served by Rumpke Recycling Cincinnati, one of North America's largest material recovery facilities. With this system, the Carton Council states that more than 600,000 households (617,860) will now have access carton recycling for the first time.