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America Recycles Day 2022

November 15th is America Recycles Day; a day aimed towards recognizing the importance and impact of recycling. Environmental Protection Agency encourages every American to contribute by recycling right, not only on America Recycles Day, but all year long. This means not only checking with your local recycling provider to know what they will accept in your recycling bin, but also learning how to properly recycle item that do not go in the curbside bin, like plastic bags, electronics, and batteries.
Benefits of Recycling
Recycling offers many benefits; some of which you are likely already aware and others which you may not have considered! Beyond reducing the amount of waste sent to landfills and incinerators, some of recycling’s other benefits include…
  1. Conserving natural resources such as timber, water, and minerals
  2. Increasing economic security by tapping a domestic source of materials
  3. Preventing pollution by reducing the need to mine raw materials
  4. Saving energy
  5. Supporting American manufacturing
  6. Creating new jobs
What You Can Do to Reduce Waste   
Whether you're at home or on the go, there are many opportunities to go green by reducing, reusing, and recycling. For example, ask yourself these questions before making a purchase:
  1. Do I really need it?
  2. Do I have something similar?
  3. Will I use it often?
  4. Can I borrow this from someone?
  5. Can I buy it secondhand?
  6. Do I just want it because someone else has it?
Recycle More, Recycle Right
How often do you ask yourself what's right to put in your recycling bin? Making sure we know how to recycle the items we are discarding is important to preventing contamination, because too many contaminants can make the recycling load unacceptable. Recycling machinery and sorting lines must slow down to sort through additional waste material. This slower processing increases operating costs and puts our national recycling efforts in jeopardy. You can help improve the recycling rate by following these steps…
  1. Check with your local recycling program to know what goes in your recycling bin.
  2. Keep recyclables clean and dry.
  3. Keep food and liquids out of the recycling bins.
  4. Place your recycling bin and trash bin together so it’s easy to recycle.
  5. Consider composting your food waste.
  6. Keep plastic bags and wraps out of your recycling bin. Instead, find a drop off location that accepts these items for recycling.
  7. Empty and flatten cardboard boxes before you recycle them.
  8. Pizza boxes are recyclable; pizza is not!
  9. Spread the word about the benefits of recycling and recycling right.
  10. When in doubt, throw it out.
 
On this America Recycles Day, we encourage our Residents to revitalize our efforts to help address the climate crisis and meet the obligations we have as a Nation to future generations. Together we can create a cleaner and greener country.