Recycling Nerd
By Karina | September 17, 2007
Last week Jenn posted about how she recycles her recyclable plastics. And YOU ALL know by now that I am a huge recycling nerd. Well, now my entire company knows as well: the weekly company newsletter featured a profile of yours truly, and being a true recycling nerd this is what I chose to say as part of my 150 words:
How do you achieve balance between work and home and still find time to pursue causes that are important to you?
I think that integrating my personal interests into the time I spend at work helps a lot. It’s important to me to recycle, so, when I observed that ? despite town, county and state laws requiring source separation ? our office building does not appear to recycle, I set up a recycling center in the office kitchen. I bring the waste home while pressuring the realty company to implement a building-wide program.
Yep, that was my tiny choice last week. Instead of trying to look like an expert in hazardous waste remediation in front of the entire company, I tooted our little home-grown office recycling program horn instead!
So in true recycling nerd fashion, I came across this list of 21 difficult to recycle materials and their solutions (thanks Co-op America!) and wanted to highlight a few of the things that caught my eye.
4. CDs/DVDs/Game Disks: Send scratched music or computer CDs, DVDs, and PlayStation or Nintendo video game disks to AuralTech for refinishing, and they’ll work like new: 888/454-3223, www.auraltech.com.
8. Computers and electronics: Find the most responsible recyclers, local and national, at www.ban.org/pledge/Locations.html.
I’m trying to figure out how to talk my office manager into getting us one of these boxes to keep around the office. It seems like a no-brainer, right?
17. “Technotrash”: Easily recycle all of your CDs, jewel cases, DVDs, audio and video tapes, cell phones, pagers, rechargeable and single-use batteries, PDAs, and ink/toner cartridges with GreenDisk’s Technotrash program. For $30, GreenDisk will send you a cardboard box in which you can ship them up to 70 pounds of any of the above. Your fee covers the box as well as shipping and recycling fees. 800/305-GREENDISK, www.greendisk.com.
And now that I’ve developed a running habit, I was very excited to learn about the next one – shout-out to my friend and runner-extraordinarie Cara for tipping me off to this a couple of months earlier:
18. Tennis shoes: Nike’s Reuse-a-Shoe program turns old shoes into playground and athletic flooring. One World Running will send still-wearable shoes to athletes in need in Africa, Latin America, and Haiti.
20. Tyvek envelopes: Quantities less than 25: Send to Shirley Cimburke, Tyvek Recycling Specialist, 5401 Jefferson Davis Hwy., Spot 197, Room 231, Richmond, VA 23234. Quantities larger than 25, call 866/33-TYVEK. [ed: that link may be broken, try this one instead]
And I love the last one!
21. Stuff you just can’t recycle: When practical, send such items back to the manufacturer and tell them they need to manufacture products that close the waste loop responsibly.
What about you? any particularly difficult to recycle items you handle at home, or would like to know more about?
Topics: Waste | 12 Comments »
these are awesome resources, thanks so much for posting them!
my pleasure! I love finding out about how EVERYTHING can be recycled.
do you know of any cell phone recycling where i could send in the phone? i have had my old one for over a year but i can’t seem to find anything local or send-in-able. i kicked myself at the bronx zoo because they have a drop-off— but how would i have known to bring my crappy cell phone? ;)
these days lots of cell phone collections refurbish and reuse your phones so the program is self-supporting. this webpage promises to recycle un-re-usable cell phones in an environmentally responsible manner… and you can plug in your zip code and see if there is a local drop-off too!
Also, I am not 100% sure, but you should be able to walk in to a cell phone store (especially of the provider of the brand that you have) and drop it off. I am fairly certain there is a law that requires them to take back up to 10 times the number of batteries (and perhaps whole phones) that they sell.
Wasn’t searching for it but came across it while working from NYCWastele$$ site http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycwasteless/html/recycling/electronicsrecycling.shtml
“All NYC stores that sell rechargeable batteries or products that contain rechargeable batteries (with the exception of small food stores) must accept up to ten batteries of the same shape and size as they sell.”
If you’re looking for another link try here: http://www.rbrc.org/call2recycle/
You can do a zipcode search, and also, if nothing comes up they list a bunch of stores that are drop-off points. Aother option, as well, is freecycle.
[...] Monday: Our recycling nerd Karina outs herself to her whole company, and shares how to recycle hard-to-recycle items. [...]
HP Using Recycled Plastic in Original Inkjets -The Same Process Two Tone uses.
Now we know what Hewlett-Packard does with all those returned inkjet empties.
HP revealed it uses a recycling process that uses post-consumer recycled plastics in the production of new original HP ink cartridges. HP inkjet cartridges returned through the company’s Planet Partners program are reduced to raw materials such as plastics and metals. The plastic is then combined with recycled bottle resin and other compounding additives to make new inkjets.
The amount of recycled content in these HP inkjet cartridges may vary between 70 to 100 percent of the total plastic used. More than 200 million cartridges have been manufactured using the process thus far. HP used more than five million pounds of recycled plastic in its inkjet cartridges last year, and the company is committed to using twice as much in 2008.
This is the Same Process Two Tone uses and statistic show 700 million cartridges were thrown away world-wide in 2003 – and since more and more people use inkjet cartridges this amount has continued to grow.
Any idea how to recycle used ink cartidges (other than HP)?
Post office used to have plastic mailers to send them in, but don’t anymore.
Love your blog, thanks!
Hi Mary! did you see the post yesterday about how to recycle everything? it might be a good place to check!
http://tinychoices.com/2008/07/29/how-to-recycle-everything/
That was tremendous post. I work in a small firm, with lot of employees. I plan to start mobile phone recycling campaign. Any suggestions?