Micro Recycling Network: December 2011

Friday, December 30, 2011

Solving the plastic lid dilemma

When I heard that Agri-Plas, a company located in Brooks, Oregon, was going to start converting plastic lids to oil, I decided to find out if apartment residents would recycle plastic lids. I asked the manager of my apartment building if he would allow me to set up a system to recover the lids. I designed a poster to explain the process to the residents. I placed the poster along with plastic bins in the recycling rooms on all nine floors in my building. I also placed posters on the building’s bulletin boards, requesting help from the residents in collecting the lids. It didn’t take long to find out how they would respond.

Within a few days lids began appearing in all of the baskets. People told me they never understood why they were asked to remove the lids and throw them in the garbage. Since placing the bins in the recycling rooms, we have had a steady stream of lids being recycled. The system has drastically decreased the number of lids being left on the containers. This is a classic case of how micro-recycling can work. We have incorporated the collection system in other buildings, with great success in each building. (Bottom photo), Matthew Lane, Community Manager of the 1200 Building, checks out the lids collected in the first couple of weeks.

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.