Yogurt containers. Plastic shopping bags. The Styrofoam that protected your new appliances from scratches and dings during shipping.

In most places around the metro area, these potentially recyclable items wind up hauled away to the landfill. A pioneering new recycling program in Coon Rapids deserves praise for showing that it doesn't have to work this way -- that there are options for turning these hard-to-recycle plastics into something other than garbage.

The Anoka County suburb's drop-off recycling center now accepts almost every form of plastic. Most cities and private waste firms in the metro area take only plastic marked with 1 or 2. But in Coon Rapids, consumers can drop off everything from clear plastic pop bottles (a 1 on the recycling scale) to yogurt containers (a 5) to the rigid foam (6) that protects everything from furniture to flat-screen TVs.

The program, which is already being eyed by cities around the metro region, is an innovative example of local government collaborating with private companies for the common good. It also shows why, sometimes, getting fed up can be a good thing.

Coon Rapids' recycling coordinator, Colleen Sinclair, simply got tired one day of fielding questions from residents about why they couldn't recycle items marked 3 or higher on the recycle scale. The answer had to with this bit of conventional wisdom: that there's not a strong resale market for these products once they've been reclaimed and readied for further use. So many waste companies won't accept them.

But Sinclair found a Minneapolis company that told her differently. The company, Consolidated Container Co., specializes in industrial recycling. It was already finding a way to market a wide range of plastics from some of the Twin Cities' largest employers. It could handle plastic from Coon Rapids, too.

The persistent Sinclair also linked up with a hometown firm: HOM Furniture, which offered a solution for the difficult problem of foam. It's bulky and hard to transport, and there are few machines in the state that can ready it for further use. HOM, however, had one. Now the store picks up foam dropped off at the recycling center for free and recycles it along with its furniture-packaging material.

Coon Rapids opened its expanded plastics recycling program in January and accepts waste from nonresidents. Officials said inquiries are coming from around the metro area. It's unfortunate that many people will need to make a special trip to do the right thing.

Since recycling went mainstream 20 years ago, the array of products that can be used again has steadily increased. The Coon Rapids center should prompt communities to take a fresh look at what's possible. And to keep pushing if at first they're told it can't be done.