Micro Recycling Network: Occupy Portland recycles

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Occupy Portland recycles

Since this blog is about multi-family housing, recycling and volunteers, I decided to check in on Occupy Portland to see how they were handling recycling. Occupy Portland is a community of 200 tents and about 400 residents set up in two park blocks in downtown Portland. They are conducting a protest in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement.

It turns out they have made provisions for recycling and are collecting material in segregated bins in the park. However, they need volunteers to help them remove the recycled items from the park. If anyone has a truck to help them with the removal, of the recycled materials, stop by anytime and ask for the head of the sanitation department.

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What is Micro Recycling?

Micro Recycling means removing items from the recycling and trash barrels that require special handling. People frequently throw recyclable items into garbage bins. And they throw items into recycling bins that need to be recycled separately. The above photo illustrates several of these items. They include clothing, electronics, Styrofoam, batteries, plastic bags, food and plastic lids. It’s important that we find ways to remove these types of materials from the bins before they’re picked up by the trash haulers and brought to landfills.

About this blog . . .

The goal of the Micro Recycling Network can be summed up in one word: solutions. Our landfills are loaded with millions of tons of items that could easily have been removed from the trash, and been effectively recycled and/or reused. We will be reporting on concepts and solutions dealing with Micro Recycling. Our first project was to begin the process of recovering plastic lids from apartment buildings and converting them into oil. We will introduce you to many other people and companies that are dedicated to improving our recycling techniques in future posts. Contact: Don McCall, ibnpdx@hotmail.com

Volunteer Profile

Apartment residents frequently discard items that can be reused. Sometimes it’s because they’re moving and won’t have enough space in the new apartment. On other occasions, the resident is upgrading an appliance, and they drop the old model in the trash room. If the apartment building takes the time to remove reusable items from the trash, they have a hard time dealing with them. That’s where a volunteer can be very helpful. We would like to introduce you to a micro recycling volunteer: Tim Mowrey. At my building, when I find reusable items in the trash, I call Tim. He comes to the rescue and takes everything to the Union Gospel Mission Thrift Store. On a recent pickup, he salvaged a working TV with remote, several bags of clothing, and a box of very nice pots and pans. In the past couple of years, he has rescued hundreds of items from the landfill.