If you have a little time during the day, do your part and help keep Nederland a clean and eco-friendly place by dropping off your recyclables at their spiffy new drop off location.

The City of Nederland reinstated its popular recycling program Wednesday with the re-opening of its Recycling Drop-Off Center on 515 Hardy Ave.

The new hours for dropping off recyclable materials are from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. The materials do not need to be separated before dropping them off.

The new hours and location came about as a result of illegal dumping at the old location on 27^th Street where the bins were available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“24/7 access, while convenient to the public, lent itself to facilitating abuse,” city manager Chris Duque said. “It’s one of the main reasons the (program) was suspended in January. It got that bad.”

In order to prevent a repeat, Duque said security cameras were being installed to prosecute anyone who illegally dumped at the facility, as well as restricting the center’s hours to only when city employees were present.

“We’re not trying to discourage anybody from recycling,” Duque said. “But we can’t just pick up at the new location and do the same thing that led to the program being suspended.

“We want this thing to be successful and we’ve adjusted the rules to make it successful.”

Duque said expansion of the program was in the works and that it was a long-term goal of the project.

“We are working on possibly doing a Saturday thing at some point,” Duque said. “We’re still working the details of that idea. We’re hoping to get something done next month.”

Duque expressed confidence that the program would still see heavy use despite the limited hours and availability.

Accepted materials at the center include the following:

Aluminum cans, tin cans, paper, cardboard, newspaper, shredded paper, mixed paper and plastics numbers one through seven.

Materials that are not accepted include the following:

Liquids of any kind, glass, copper, heavy aluminum, batteries including car batteries, electronics such as TVs, computers, cell phones and tablets and trash of any kind.