Don't mistake the City of Laurinburg's new recycling bins for regular trash cans, as you will be warned once, and then placed on a fine scale if you continue to misuse the containers.

The city purchased the new bins for $267,000, paid for in part with a $100,000 grant from the NC Department of Natural Resources and used the city's funds to pay the remaining $167,000, for the 5,700 units.

The goal for the city is to use the bins for 10 years," General Services Director Harold Haywood said. "There is a sticker on the top of the container to notify the residents of what can go in the bin and what should be put in a regular trash container."

The new 95 gallon bins finished their roll-out phase this past Wednesday.

"We don't use them at apartments or businesses that have dumpsters available to them, they will still use the small blue bins for the recycling needs," Haywood said.

The city is hoping to increase their total tons of recycling in the 10-year span to reduce the number of items that are sitting in a landfill that could have been recycled.

"We want to reduce our landfill mass, and the city sees recycling as the opportunity to do that," Haywood said.

"We only do our recycling pick up every two weeks, and having the larger bins will allow the residents to put more of their recycling in the container."