America Recycles Day, celebrated last week, offers another way to reduce waste during the holidays. Organized for the past 18 years by Keep America Beautiful, the event this year had a message focused on "recycling right."

A pledge campaign asked participants to not just recycle, but also to find out what materials can and cannot be recycled in their communities — an important step to avoid contamination of recyclables. For example, bottle glass can be recycled in any local curbside recycling program, but if you mix in glass from windows, picture frames, mirrors or ceramics, it can make the resulting mixture undesirable to manufacturers who buy recycled glass.

Thanksgiving is a good time to avoid food waste by sharing with those who do not have as much on their tables. Nonprofit regional food banks normally accept  not only canned and shelf-stable food, but this time of year, some also accept food requiring refrigerators or freezers. Most cannot directly accept prepared Thanksgiving food.

In 1621, the pilgrims held the first Thanksgiving, finding ways to sustain their civilization in a challenging environment and helped by neighbors with whom they shared resources. In that spirit of thankfulness and sharing, this month keep your eye on the environment by reducing waste, recycling right and sharing food.

For more information on recycling, contact Fibrex Group.

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With a little thought, you can reduce, reuse and recycle during the holidays to give the environment the precious gift of less while saving yourself time, money and stress. Follow these tips to get started:

1. Throw a green holiday party - Get ideas from the 10 Simple Ways to Go Green at a House Party list.

2. Reduce food waste - Make cleaning up after your party easier by reducing holiday food waste.

3. Send eCards or recycled-content cards - Recycle paper cards and send electronic holiday cards to reduce paper waste.

4. Give the gift of togetherness: No-waste gift ideas - Sometimes the most cherished gifts we can give are our time, love and energy. Consider making a charitable donation in someone else's name. Or, give an experience or an event to remember, such as:

• Candlelit dinner
• Tickets to a concert sporting event
• Passes to a favorite park
• Gift certificates to dinner, for a massage or day at the spa
• Membership to a museum or zoo
• Make a coupon or gift certificate that offers your time to walk a pet, babysit or help with extra chores
• Giving the gift of an experience is a great option for children who want to give family gifts but don't have the money or a way to buy them. Let children know that homemade gifts and gifts of their time are more valuable to you.

5. Take reusable cloth bags on shopping trips - Thousands of bags end up in our landfills during the holidays. Reduce the number of bags by bringing reusable shopping bags for holiday gift shopping. If you do use paper bags or plastic bags, recycle them when you no longer need them.

6. Give quality gifts - Durable products last longer and save money in the long run. Cheaper, less durable items wear out quickly and create more landfill waste.

7. Use earth-friendly gift wrapping alternatives, such as

• Scarves, handkerchiefs and bandannas
• Old posters and maps
• Newspapers (the comic sections works great) & magazines
• A present in a present.  Place gifts inside reusable containers like cookie tins, flower pots, and baskets or wrap gift in cloth napkins or kitchen towels.
• Give a “treasure map” to find an unwrapped gift hidden elsewhere in the house
• Use re-useable or re-used gift bags

8. Use rechargeable batteries - About 40 percent of all battery sales occur during the holiday season. Rechargeable batteries reduce the amount of potentially harmful materials thrown away, and can save money in the long run.

9. Turn off or unplug holiday lights during the day - This saves energy and lights last longer.  Recycle unwanted or broken string lights.

10. Recycle your live Christmas tree - When the holiday season is over, recycle your holiday tree and wreath.

Quick Facts

From Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day, household waste increases by more than 25 percent. Added food waste, shopping bags, packaging, wrapping paper, bows and ribbons—it all adds up.  And it's not just trash. The average American spends $800 on gifts over the holiday season.

*Fact source: EPA at http://www.epa.gov/osw/wycd/funfacts/winter.htm and www.rethinkrecycling.com

America Recycles Day (ARD), celebrated on November 15 every year, is dedicated to encouraging Americans to recycle and to buy recycled products. The purpose of America Recycles Day is to promote the social, environmental and economic benefits of recycling and to encourage more people to join the movement to create a better natural environment.

America Recycles Day Events and Education

Since the first America Recycles Day in 1997, ARD has helped millions of Americans become better informed about the importance of recycling and buying products made from recycled materials.

Through America Recycles Day, the National Recycling Coalition helps volunteer coordinators organize events in hundreds of communities nationwide to raise awareness and educate people about the benefits of recycling.

And it’s working. Americans today are recycling more than ever.

In 2006, according to the EPA, every American generated about 4.6 pounds of waste daily and recycled approximately one third of it (roughly 1.5 pounds).

The rate of composting and recycling in the United States rose from 7.7 percent of the waste stream in 1960 to 17 percent in 1990. Today, Americans recycle around 33 percent of their waste.

In 2007, the amount of energy saved from recycling aluminum and steel cans, plastic PET and glass containers, newsprint and corrugated packaging was equivalent to:

• The amount of electricity consumed by 17.8 million Americans in one year.
• 29 percent of nuclear electricity generation in the U.S. in one year.
• 7.9 percent of U.S. electricity generation from fossil fuels in one year.
• 11 percent of the energy produced by coal-fired power plants in the United States
• The energy supplied from 2.7% of imported barrels of crude oil into the United States
• The amount of gasoline used in almost 11 million passenger automobiles in one year

Despite that progress, however, much more needs to be done because the stakes are very high.

America Recycles Day Highlights the Benefits of Recycling

Recycling helps to conserve natural resources and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. According to the EPA, recycling one ton of aluminum cans saves the energy equivalent of 36 barrels of oil or 1,655 gallons of gasoline.

Saving Energy on America Recycles Day

If a ton of cans is a little too much to visualize, consider this: recycling a single aluminum can saves enough energy to power a television for three hours.

Yet, every three months, Americans toss enough aluminum into landfills to rebuild the entire U.S. fleet of commercial airplanes, according to the National Recycling Coalition.

Using recycled materials also saves energy and reduces global warming. For example, using recycled glass consumes 40 percent less energy than using new materials. Americans also contribute to recycling by purchasing products with recycled content, less packaging and fewer harmful materials.

Learn How Recycling Helps the Economy on America Recycles Day

Recycling also reduces costs to businesses and creates jobs. The American recycling and reuse industry is a $200 billion dollar enterprise that includes more than 50,000 recycling and reuse establishments, employs more than 1 million people, and generates an annual payroll of approximately $37 billion.

~Original from: www.Environment.about.com

Waller Middle School is doing its part to use resources responsibly. A class of special needs students has facilitated a school-wide recycling program that has been disposing of the school’s paper and aluminum can waste for years.

Andrew Wagner, one of the teachers who works on the project, said they use recycling bins to pick up recycling items from around the school.

“We throw newspapers in one and everything else in the other,” he said. “We come back to the class and organize it: cardboard, papers. Some are confidential so we shred them. We bag it up and around 1:30 (p.m.) we have a wheelchair bus come by and we take it out to the recycle center.”

The program has been going on for about 10 years, and has expanded from shredding paper products to include cans: they even have a can crusher that students can operate, and each classroom has a bin for recycling, which the program participants pick up every Friday.

Special education teacher Jeanny Gunning said her class always has done the recycling program.

“It gives them the opportunity to do jobs, learn those job skills, be on tasks for a certain amount of time,” she said. “There are programs after they graduate from high school where they can use these same skills and have actual jobs.”

Students and teachers roll recycling bins around to classrooms and sort through paper waste.

“If we get books, we have to tear them apart,” Willson said; workbooks that teachers no longer use have to be torn up to fit into the shredder.

Willson said his favorite part of the program is helping Wagner collect recycling.

“It helps the city and the world,” he said, dumping a stack of papers into the bin. “And the environment. That’s what it does.”

Waller Principal Adam Beauchamp said the program helps the environment, but it’s also a great opportunity for the students to give back to their community.

“Any time we can give back to our school, our community, our earth as a whole,” he said. “It provides a lot of value and a self-esteem and self-worth to our kids. It gives them an opportunity to interact throughout the school. That’s been very beneficial.”

For information on recycling containers for your school recycling program, contact Fibrex Group.

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