Today Is America Recycles Day

Recycling Photo by Cindy Cotte Griffiths

At last Monday’s Mayor and Council Meeting, Rockville officially proclaimed our City’s support for America Recycles Day. What does this mean?

Since 1997 it’s the only nationally recognized day dedicated to the promotion of recycling programs in the United States. Today more than 2,000 events have been registered from electronics recycling to art exhibits. Keep America Beautiful sponsors the event.

Since Rockville recycles almost everything, this year’s theme, “I Recycle” is very appropriate. As Craig Simoneau, Director of Public Works, professed during the information sessions for our new recycling program, “our old garbage can has become ‘The Cart of Last Resort’. Now our family has containers for all the paper/cardboard and a plastic bag for all the plastic bags/wrappers in addition to our garbage can.

As I wrote in New Refuse and Recycling Program: What You Need To Know, almost everything goes in the big recycling cart.

The absolute best part of the new recycling program is that you don’t have to sort anything. Just throw everything in the cart! Old hard and soft cover books can even be recycled if they aren’t good enough to donate to the library. Pizza boxes can go in even if they have that usual grease stain (however if the box is completely stained you should put in in refuse instead). You don’t need to worry about the numbers on any plastic items anymore. You can even keep the lids or screw tops on the bottles/jars because they will be crushed before they ever make it to the recycling plant. All the paper wrappings from your takeout can go in the cart too, as well as those healthy yogurt containers. If your aerosol can is empty throw it in. If you shred documents, put the shreds in a brown paper bag and roll it up before putting it in the cart.

Some plastic items cannot be recycled. A chemical in the plastic of “clam-shell” containers used for strawberries/blueberries and prepared chicken cannot be recycled and there is no market for this plastic. No automotive fluid or pesticide bottles, PVC piping, vinyl siding, Styrofoam, or water hoses can be put in recycling. These and other items still need to be put in the regular trash.

Even though we have the new recycling program, I still find a few items mistakenly put in the trash can. Today’s a good opportunity to reinforce your recycling habits.

Before we even bring products home we can also make smarter consumer choices by choosing products which are not packaged individually and placing food in reusable containers.

Ritchie Park Elementary began a new program called Waste Free Wednesdays. On one day a week, students bring a completely waste free lunch to win prizes. I’ll admit the first week we went through great effort to make a lunch with a washable sandwich containers and water bottle. I thought I did great job but when my son came home we had failed! I had absentmindedly wrapped one of our forks in a paper napkin so the lunch didn’t qualify! It’s been a very thought provoking weekly exercise which has been inspiring me to be waste free more often.

Here are some ways to make today more meaningful:

• Check what we can recycle in Rockville.
• Take the America Recycles Day Pledge and commit to recycling as often as possible. Spread the word and tell your friends.
• Download the America Recycles Day badge and show your support by featuring it as your Facebook avatar for the day.
• Download the Aluminate™ iPhone App to help boost your aluminum recycling efforts. Alcoa will donate $1 to Keep America Beautiful for every download.
• Commit to recycle, and ask your friends to as well, by making a Dream Machine ‘Bottle Promise’ at www.facebook.com/DreamMachine.

Get more recycling facts, tips and tools at americarecyclesday.org.

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