365 Ways to Save the Planet

Day 270 – Recycling has had it challenges throughout the years. As a society, we consume way too much. So much so, we can not keep up on the waste. We don’t have the infrastructure to recycle what we can and we are running out of landfills to bury everything else. Our first goal to improving our situation is to reduce what we are using and throwing away. We need to move to a reusable way of life and ditch the single-use items.

Recycle Across America is a non-profit trying to improve the recycling rates across America, by providing information with best practices to reduce, reuse, refuse and recycle. They offer countless resources to help increase recycling rates and to take the guessing out of the recycling process.

Tips to Reduce Waste and Recycle Right

Recycling Facts

Recycling Toolkit

Resources for businesses, airports, stadiums and much more!

Here are a few simple ways you can recycle right:

1. NO food, NO liquids, NO straws, NO plastic cups and NO plastic dishware in the recycling bin. 
2. NEVER put your recyclables in plastic bags and never put any plastic bags in your regular recycling bin or recycling dumpster. Plastic bags and plastic wrap get jammed in recycling processing equipment, which causes recycling to be expensive to process.
3. NO plastic bags, NO Styrofoam, and NO plastic wraps or wrappers should ever go in the recycling bin.
4. Unless you have a clean cardboard pizza box, please do not put cheesy, oily pizza boxes in your recycling bin.   The oil, cheese, and sauce on the box can contaminate the cardboard. 
5. Never put glass drinkware or window glass in your bin.  Recycle glass bottles and jars only.
6. Put the plastic cap back on the empty plastic bottle or jug before you put it in the recycling bin.
7.  Recycle all clean paper and all clean and flattened cardboard boxes. If you have time, please remove all tape and all plastic wrap that might be attached to the cardboard. They will accept tape on the cardboard, but the cardboard recycling processors will greatly appreciate it if you remove all plastic materials from the cardboard.
8. Instead of wish-cycling, make sure every common recyclable such as metal cans, plastic bottles, plastic jugs, clean cardboard, and clean paper gets recycled.  And if you’re not sure about something, let it go to the landfill to avoid contamination.  
9.  DO NOT THROW COMPOSTABLE PLASTICS IN RECYCLING BINS – compostable plastics such as PLA, are not recyclable and can actually contaminate good recycling. 
10. Do not throw batteries or electronics in your recycle bin. Take them to the proper facilities to have them recycled properly.

“Without exception, recycling is the top action society can do to simultaneously improve: the environment, the economy, sustainable manufacturing and to prevent waste from going into oceans.” – Recycle Across America

LET’S DO OUR PART!

Tomorrow, reusable takeout containers in Chicago.