Your Questions About Recycling

The Expert answers:

Typically, you should be recycling all 1’s and 2’s (plastics). Those are worth it. The higher numbers are just informing you that recycling (or better environmental choices in material) happened to some extent before the product reached you. Even if ALL Plastics are picked up… It is the 1’s and 2’s that are actually reused.

Most recycling drop offs (or pick up service) will also take newspaper, magazines, junk mail, white/colored paper, telephone books, flattened (non-soiled) boxes, glass bottles or jars and food/soda cans (labels may stay).

Avoid these: NO plastic bags – do not put your recyclables in plastic bags. Also, remember that pizza boxes are soiled obviously and are therefore non-recyclable.

The Expert answers:

First of all – GOOD FOR YOU!!! Count me in if you are anywhere near Fishers! I don’t know what scale you are thinking of, but here are some ideas from home level to city wide!

Composting is my favorite recycling project, I’m an avid gardener! – educating people on the benefits of compost, and the simplicity of making it is the ultimate recycling project! You can see the results, and it keeps so much out of landfills.
– saving grass clippings, letting them rot down and spreading them on flower beds etc. Even better – mow with a mulching mower! Garden waste can be saved in anything from a simple pile to a fancy compost bin.
-collecting leaves in fall; on a home level, mow over them and bag them. Spreading the chipped leaves over flower beds creates great mulch, protects your plants, and puts essential nutrients back into the soil. On a community scale, you’d need a large place to compost them, but compost is excellent plant food, and you can sell it cheap to cover costs! (or free if you don’t have costs)
– you can collect tree limbs, trimmings etc and chip them for mulch. Sell bags of mulch back to the community!
– set up a central recycling point. Lots of skips for different recyclables, you can actually cover your own costs in a lot of ways here, aluminum and other metals, and paper/magazines can be sold to recyclers. Include building materials if you really want to get large scale!
– have recycling bins next to regular trash bins around town for cans, plastic and glass bottles. In Germany, their regular trash cans are divided into 4 sections for glass, plastic, metal and trash! It is so cool. This would obviously need town approval, but getting them involved would be awesome!

There are so many ways to approach this, but the most important thing, I think, is to educate the public! In general, most Americans don’t think in terms of recycling, or the environment. Just getting the public to change their thinking is the biggest step to success – and making things easy for them will help too!

I hope this helps! Good Luck.

The Expert answers:

You are making it difficult for us to help you, because you’re not mentioning what is the name of your municipality. Every towns, cities, countries have different criteria for recycling.

You might not be aware of it, but your message is being read right now on Yahoo ! Answers in ; Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

I suggest you contact the place you intend to bring those bags to be recycled and ask them for Their list of do and don’t in recycling.

Good luck and thank you for caring about our planet.
Greetings from Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

The Expert answers:

Get a petition signed by all your neighbors and write a letter stating that you feel you should have recylce boxes or bins for your apartment. State some reasons. OR !!!!
You and a few others can invest in some bins, and label them “cans”, “glass” “plastic” ETC. And if you collect enough I’m sure the landlord or someone could sort something out!

The Expert answers:

Most of it is done by hand.

If you look at the diversion of materials away from landfills, that is an impact.
If you look at the run off and potentials for soil contamination at such a location, you are also impacting the environment.

The Expert answers:

Make a compost in your yard to help the soil.
Buy the Samsung 55 inch flat screen TV ( most energy efficient tv out there)
Open the blinds instead of turning on the lights.
Keep your lights off the whole day until it gets dark and let the sun in ( unless it’s dark and rainy)
Bring your own totes to grocery stores.
Turn off the computer at night or whenever your not using it (whichever one)
Unplug hairdryers, hair straighteners, etc. (these still use energy while plugged in)
Buy energy efficient lights.
Pick up trash in your neighborhood
Cut down on junk mail.

Spread the word about doing these things to help the earth!

The Expert answers:

A University would be great. Get in touch with a local one (preferably a bigger one) and just talk to someone involved in biology. They’ll help you find who you need to talk to.

The Expert answers:

If you’re talking about a municipal Materials Recovery Facility, for example, they usually just do it by hand. Plastics are the most problematic recyclables as far as contamination – a lot of plastic loads are sent to landfills or burned because of that.

The adhesives and labels are soaked off in hot water. Glass is usually not recycled anymore as it is too expensive to transport – here they use it in building roads. Plastics, depending on the type, can tolerate some adhesive contamination as they are melted and pressed into structural materials like those plastic benches you see. Few plastics are able to be remanufactured into the same item it came from, unlike glass or aluminum.

DK

The Expert answers:

Start by checking with your community’s refuse disposal service (the local garbage man department.) They already take care of the trash pickup, and they also know if other residents are asking for recycling. It worked for us in our town, and it was much easier than going through city hall – the department made the request on behalf of us all.