Like other Kokomo residents, Katy Bowers and her family don't have to pay for trash pick-up, but they do have to drop off their recycling at one of the city's nine recycling stations.
"It doesn't seem like a big deal to just bring it here, but it quickly piles up and then you forget to bring it and you wind up with huge mounds at your house and you start throwing things away," Bowers says.
That will change as the city rolls out curbside recycling to about a third of its residents next month and then the entire city by summer.
Mayor Greg Goodnight says this was something he wanted to do when he first took office in 2008.
"We have a business here in town that's invested in the recycled materials so they will stay here in the community and be sorted there and that was really what was always the glitch, the transportation costs were the biggest hurdle."
He says there are still no plans to charge for trash unless the recycling costs become too much of a burden and the city has to find a way to offset the expense.