A waste management company serving north Whatcom County reports its customers increased their recycling by 4.6 percent last year and surpassed 6 million pounds of recyclables for the third year in a row.

Nooksack Valley Disposal & Recycling reports its residential customers recycled 2,728,977 pounds of newspaper, mixed paper, cardboard, glass, scrap metal, plastic, aluminum cans and tin cans in 2013. One notable difference from 2012 was glass recycling, up more than 70,000 pounds. The company’s yard-waste and food-waste recycling program again rose to 3,618,000 pounds, up 117 tons (or 6.9 percent) from 2012.

“We’ve very pleased that so many local residents set recyclable materials on their curbs or bring them to our transfer station, keeping 3,173 tons of material out of landfills,” the company’s general manager, Calvin Den Hartog, said in a news release.

Nooksack Valley Disposal & Recycling was founded by Dan and Steff Leidecker in 1971. It serves more 6,900 residential customers in north Whatcom County.

The company’s food waste and yard waste program started in 2007. Material is taken to Green Earth Technologies of Lynden to be made into compost. Yard waste can also be taken to Nooksack Valley Disposal’s transfer station at 250 Birch Bay-Lynden Road in Lynden.