In spite of very clear lists of what can and can’t go into your blue bin, the City of Winnipeg says a troubling item from the banned list keeps appearing: used diapers.

"When it was really bad, we were finding anywhere between two and four thousand per week," said Mark Kinsley, a waste division supervisor for the City of Winnipeg.

Kinsley says more recently, the number of used diapers has dropped to about 15 hundred a week. "But even that's too high a number," said Kinsley.

The city says the diapers appear to be coming from all parts of the city, and from both single family curbside blue bins and multi-family bins. And the city is worried about the potential impact on staff at the facility.

"When it comes to diapers, the workers have to handle them manually. Physically," said Kinsley. "So it's a very unhygienic, unhealthy situation for them."

The solution is simple, say city officials. Diapers must be thrown in the garbage, not recycling.

Altogether, the City of Winnipeg Recycling Depot takes in roughly 200 metric tonnes of waste per day.