Photo credit: Otherwords

– “A Curbside Crisis”
“How much of what you recycle ends up at the dump?”

* First, don’t “wish-cycle.”
“Lumping together old garden hoses, plastic shopping bags, and old sneakers with newspapers and plastic milk jugs won’t get that junk reincarnated as yogurt containers.

It just increases the cost of the entire recycling process by making it harder to haul and sort everything, because workers will be taking your wish-cycled items to a different destination — a trash incinerator or landfill. Learn your local recycling rules and follow them.

* Second, don’t grab that bag.
Putting your recyclables into a bag to carry them out to the recycling bin might seem logical, but every bag has to be ripped open at the sorting facility — a time-consuming process that holds up the sorting line. This time crunch is sometimes “solved” along the way by tossing the bags of recyclables into the trash pile.

Instead, try collecting and carrying your recyclables out to the bin in a container or box, and reuse it every week.

* Finally, play the sorting game.
See if your city has special collection points for electronics or specific plastic containers to ensure they end up in the right place. Some cities even collect paper separately to protect it from contamination. Castoffs unfit for curbside collection might be perfect for a recycling drop-off at a nearby grocery or supply store. Check Earth911.com to discover what can be recycled where.

Recycling is an important service to our society — and our planet. If U.S. recycling levels can rise to a 75 percent participation rate, that would equal the environmental benefit of removing 50 million cars from the road each year and could generate 1.5 million new green jobs.

All it would take to turn things around and keep more of our trash out of the dump is a handful of new recycling habits,” quoting Beth Porter, OtherWords.
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– “Welcome to Thurston County Solid Waste”
“Your waste prevention and recycling resource!”
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