WHAT CAN BE RECYCLED?
WE HEAR IT OFTEN: "RECYCLE, RECYCLE!" BUT WHAT CAN REALLY BE RECYCLED?
The following items can be turned in to your local recycling center:
Aluminum Cans: This is what comes to mind most often when we think of recycling. Whether you are using aluminum soft drink cans, or canned food, both can be turned in for reuse. Store them (they are often stackable like Russian dolls) until you have a load to take to the bin.
Aluminum Foil: This includes that disposable roasting pan you used for your Thanksgiving turkey. Ball it up to save space, and toss it in with your aluminum.
Empty Aerosol Cans: This is a great argument: aerosol can harm the ozone, but the cans can be recycled. If you have aerosol cans anyway, you can at least turn them back in.
Glass Bottles: After using up that wine or salad dressing, don’t just toss the bottle out. Recycle it, and toss the aluminum lid in with the cans. It is also good to separate clear, green, and amber glass, as these use different components for coloring, and are therefore recycled differently. Clear bottles are the most valuable. Be careful not to mix with other types glass, such as windows, light bulbs, mirrors, glass tableware, Pyrex or auto glass, as these are contaminated and difficult for disposal employees to sort out.
Plastic Containers: Ok, first about those cryptic recycling codes, which are surrounded by the triangle arrows and stamped on the bottom of the container. These arrows only identify the type of the plastic, and neither mean that the item is made of recycled plastic or that the plastic can actually be recycled. You will generally find numbers 1 and 2 in container form (milk, juice, fresh pasta,) and those are easily recycled. Code 7 is mixed plastic, with virtually no recycling value. Try to place code with code in your recycling bin, realizing that the cap on the bottle is rarely of the same code as the bottle itself.
Junk Mail: When you get unwanted fliers, take them home and put them right into your paper-dedicated recycling bin. The same goes for used phone books, old magazines, and newspapers.
Used Cartons: Cardboard food boxes, like the one your frozen dinner came in, can be recycled, as can the brown paper bags that you brought the food home in.
White Office Paper: To keep things separate, place a lid on your recycling container with a file-sized slit, so employees do not accidentally toss food waste into your used office paper. Leaving staples in the paper is ok.
Motor Oil: Each year do-it-yourself oil changers improperly dump more oil than the tanker Exxon Valdez spilled into Alaska's Prince William Sound. Please remember, storm drains flow, unfiltered, into rivers and lakes. Recycling used motor oil is easy. Typically you used oil into a plastic milk jug and clearly mark it "used motor oil". The following should help you find a location to take the oil. Please drop off oil during regular business hours only:
· Call your local garbage, recycling or toxics agency for a referral.
· In California - Call 1-800-CLEAN-UP for locations.
· Many quick-lube shops take oil (the industry association encourages it):
o Jiffy Lube - (Contact any Jiffy Lube Station nationwide).
o Valvoline Instant Oil Change Centers - (Contact any Valvoline Station)(Valvoline's First Recovery Service, however, was sold to Safety Klean).
· Many auto stores take oil, including Grand Auto, R&S Strauss, Pep-Boys and Wal-Mart. Some states have laws requiring any business that sells oil to take used oil back from consumers.
Antifreeze contaminates motor oil - do not mix the two. If your car has blown a gasket and you are draining the oil, mark it clearly as potentially contaminated and treat it as non-recyclable household waste (see below). Never mix anything with used motor oil. Never place used oil in a container that has contained other chemicals.
Tires: You normally must pay a fee to dispose of a tire (usually $1-$5), but it is worth it. Improperly disposed tires tend to rise to the top of landfills, breed mosquitoes, transit disease when traded globally, and burn when stacked in large piles.
Car Batteries: Your old car battery might be worth money. Even if not, any car parts shop will take it.
Do I need to wash the bottles out? That’s your choice. It is no longer necessary to remove labels, and the heat process will destroy the contaminants of food left inside the container. If you would rather save water, rinse just enough to avoid odor. However, if you are of the mind to be nice to your local disposal employees, they would probably appreciate not dealing with an excessively chunky product.
Paper That CANNOT be Recycled: food contaminated paper, waxed paper, waxed cardboard milk & juice containers, oil soaked paper, carbon paper, sanitary products or tissues, thermal fax paper, stickers and plastic laminated paper such as fast food wrappers, juice boxes, and pet food bags. Also, though aseptic containers, such as drink boxes and soy milk containers, have been marketed as eco-friendly, the recycling process is very costly and difficult.
Often, we want to reuse more than that. Though the following products cannot be recycled, they can be reused as something else:
Clothing, Textiles, and Shoes: If the clothing is in decent condition, try to find a local clothing drive, such as one through a church or community center. Biodegradable clothing, such as hemp, is still expensive, but hopefully soon it will be easier to buy.
Round Dairy Tubs: Try to get one more use out of them by punching a few small holes in the bottom, filling them with potting soil, and using them to start seeds for a garden. However, when transplant time comes, be sure to remove the root mass from the tub, as these will not break down in the soil. Before you try the "redneck cereal bowl" option, check the plastic code on the bottom of the tub with information on our
go green page.
Plastic Pots: If you cannot reuse your planter pots, try to find a neighbor who gardens, or find a local gardening club to donate them to. If you continue to plant and find an excess of pots, look for biodegradable peat pots, which can be inserted directly into the ground with the seedling inside.
Ceramics: If the dishes are in good condition, donate them to a thrift store, or ask your young friends, who are trying to set out on their own, if they would like free dishes.
Plastic Grocery Bags: Oh, there are so many ideas out to avoid placing these in landfills! First of all, try to either reuse these bags at your next shopping trip or take your own reusable bags, to avoid even dealing with the plastic ones. Second, they can be used for doggie doodie duty, or donated to a local park for the same purpose. I have even seen people tear these up and crochet them into floor mats.
Batteries: Ask around locally to see if there is an environmental disposal system in place for used batteries. These can be dangerous in landfills. To dispose of rechargeable batteries,
· Call 1-800-8BATTERY.
· Visit the RBRC drop of location finder.
· Try your local Radio Shack store.
Plastic Cups and Utensils: First of all, let’s avoid using them by either buying paper cups or supplying reusable cups and utensils at our parties. At work, encourage each employee to bring his/her own reusable cups. It may take a bit longer to do the dishes, but the water use is less than the environmental impact of plastic.
Styrofoam Packaging: Despite environmental rants, companies are still using Styrofoam. If you have a shipping/receiving business, research the costs of using peanuts made of cornstarch and glue, which dissolve in water. Buy eggs that come in cardboard containers. When you do have to deal with Styrofoam waste, try to tie it in a plastic bag so it stays together and does not blow around.
Toxic Product Containers (like automobile fluids): If you do not know of an environmental disposal system in your area, call your local oil lube places or mechanics. Many cities require that they dispose of their waste responsibly, and they may be able to give you the name of their disposal system.
Cell Phones: If your old phone still works, remove all personal information from it and donate it to a women’s shelter. If it does not work, contact your local chapter of FEMA to donate the components for community training.
Food Waste: Food and yard scraps placed in a special bin are converted into valuable garden soil in a matter of weeks. Compost bins are available at garden stores & nurseries. Composting can easily reduce by half the volume of material a household sends to a landfill. If you don't care about accelerating the processing, just keep adding material at the top. Just try to keep a balance of dry "brown" materials and fresh "green" material. Lots of things you'd otherwise throw away can be composted, including wine bottle corks, cooking oils, certain types of foam packing peanuts, used paper towels, dryer lint, etc. If it is natural, you can probably compost it without trouble!
What impact do you, personally, have on the environment?
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What can you do?
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What resources can you find on the web?
Blackrock Wellness