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February 27, 2010

A Word About Recycling - Feb. 28, 2010

By Ollie & Gloria Maier Daily Record Columnists The San Marcos Record Sat Feb 27, 2010, 03:35 PM CST

— With many of us watching the Winter Olympics on TV, here’s what we think is an interesting item reported in the latest Resource Recycling e-newsletter.

“As Olympic teams from various nations around the world try to reach for the gold, take solace in knowing that the gold medal being awarded is made containing metals recovered from end-of-life electronics. The metals — also in the silver and bronze medals handed out in the 2010 Winter Olympics — come from e-scrap processed by local B.C. firm Teck Resources Ltd., and Brussels, Belgium-based Umicore.”

(Let’s hope the U.S. Continues to take a number of these medals... Course, in our minds, all the competitors train so hard and try so hard that they are all winners!)

Switching subjects, a while back a reader brought it to our attention she was disappointed the post offices were not recycling more of the mail they were not able to deliver but were sending it to the landfill. If she reads this, she will be happy to learn the same e-newsletter had an article stating:

“The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) announced that its Post Office Box Lobby Recycling program will be expanded to incorporate 2,435 additional post offices, including numerous offices located in U.S. national parks. The program, now available at more than 8,050 USPS locations, recycled approximately 200,000 tons in 2009.”

We find that “Under the program, postal customers are encouraged to open their mail, take whatever action is necessary and place the unwanted mail in a secure recycling bins equipped with a slim opening — about the width of a magazine — which ensures that a customer's privacy is kept.”

A spokesperson for the USPS explained, "It makes it even easier for post office box customers to go green by recycling their discarded P.O. Box mail right at the post office."

(Course, if you receive your mail at home, you can always put all the unneeded, and often unwanted, items in your recycle container.)

And speaking of recycle containers, if you take them to the Green Guy Recycling Services drop-off site, you’ll be happy to learn that you concerned citizens using this facility started this new year off with a bang. Their figures for the amount taken in for January are:

Metals = 1,619,051 pounds (over a million and a half pounds is a lot of metal!)

Cardboard = 218,240 pounds

Paper = 94,700 pounds

Glass = 48,825 pounds

Plastic = 17,236 pounds

They also took in over 830 gallons of oil, 200 used oil filters and 100 used tires.

(What a great way to start off the new year.)

Till next week, do have a great one...

Gloria and Ollie are local citizens concerned with the environment and helping others. Ollie is a graduate of Leadership San Marcos and they both received higher education at TxState University and worked on staff before retiring. For questions or comments, please call them at353-7432 or e-mail them to omaier@TxState.edu.

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