Americans dispose of billions upon billions of paper, plastic, and foam cups. This year over 58 billion paper cups and 25 billion polystyrene foam cups will pass through our hands and end up in landfills. While the United States is still the world’s largest culprit of disposable cup waste, growing nations like China and India are fast catching up. It’s a cup carrying, cup dumping world! Read the rest of this entry »

Recycle your used “Zip Lock” plastic storage bags. Cut-off all hard components (zippers etc.) and collect zipper-less bags in a plastic shopping bag. Recycle the shopping bag and its contents at your local retailer’s plastic bag recycling station. Help keep more LDPE (#4) plastic out of our landfills.

Just Zip It. Zipper-type plastic storage bags have hundreds of uses and are fast becoming the quintessential storage solution for households and businesses. Foods, electronic parts, garden soils, and even crime scene evidence end up packaged in these convenient, storage bags. Although millions of these bags are used daily, recycling used zipper-type plastic bags is not so easy. Read the rest of this entry »

Valentine’s Day is a festival of cards, candy, and flowers. During this holiday, 65% of all US households will exchange greeting cards, 38% will give or receive candy, and 32% will turn to flowers to say, “Will you be my Valentine?” Read the rest of this entry »

Make your Valentine’s Day greener by incorporating gifts and decorations that contain recycled content and can be recycled. Rather than throw out “old” decorations, donate them to a shelter or other community service provider. Reuse is definitely a big part of recycling. A Green Valentine’s Day is a good thing!

Search the web to find which vitamins are inherently found in your favorite vegetable. Share this information with a friend. The power of a garden should never be taken for granted. A garden brings us closer to nature, provides vital sustenance, and is recyclable (composting provides the perfect closed loop system).

As an avid recycler with a scientific background, this latest posting is in response to an article I recently read in; “The Atlantic”, by C. Flanagan titled, “Cultivating Failure – How School Gardens are cheating our most vulnerable students”. Read the rest of this entry »

See if your community offers curbside recycling of cartons; visit www.aseptic.org. Curbside carton recycling includes standard gable top cartons and aseptic brick packages. If your community does not have curbside pick up, phone your municipal recycling facility and ask, “Why not?” Cartons should be as important to recycle as bottles and cans.

When we think of recycling beverage containers, the plastic bottle or the aluminum can come to mind. The prolific use and discard of these holders of liquids has spurred us on to enact anti-litter laws, collect used bottles and cans, and to recycle. As systems to recycle beverage containers evolve, our focus (at least in the USA) seems to still revolve around the collection of PET plastic, aluminum cans, and glass. While advancements in packaging technology have brought us beverage products packaged in “long life packaging” like the Tetrapak® aseptic brick, little has been done (at least in our country) to “sort out” how these useful multi-material packages can be recycled. Read the rest of this entry »

Make your effort to recycle a resolution for life. If you are lucky enough to live where financial incentive exists to recycle, consider it a bonus. Save the earth even without earning a nickel.