— Today we will mention some relatively local recycling items. The first refers to an item noticed in the latest issue of the electric co-op magazine. It stated that PEC will accept burnt-out CFLs for recycling.

Since not all of you readers get electricity from PEC, a check was made with the city of San Marcos and also Bluebonnet Electric to see if they also recycle them.

From the city of San Marcos, I received the following (Thanks, Jan): “... the city does accept used CFLs at our household hazardous waste events.

Also, the grand opening of our hazardous waste facility is Aug 6.  The facility will be open Tuesdays and Fridays from noon to 3:30 p.m.  So residents will be able to drop off their used CFLs (and other hazardous materials) on either Tuesdays or Fridays, or at our special Saturday events.  Jo Secrest is in charge of our recycling and hazardous waste programs, and can answer any more questions you have.” (Jo’s telephone number is 393-8036.)

(This was very good news that a facility for all of Hays County’s Household Hazardous Waste has been established and will be open more than one day a week.)

And from Bluebonnet, we received the following (Thanks, Barbara): “At this time, Bluebonnet does not offer a CFL bulb recycling program for our membership.  We do recycle in house but we do not have an outlet for our members.”

(We suspect they too will open it to their members in the future and appreciate their already doing it in-house.)

We attended a recent San Marcos ‘Comprehensive Municipal Solid Waste Task Force Meeting’ and found the local efforts enlightening and encouraging. The speaker for the program was Robert Gedert, Solid Waste Services director for the city of Austin. He is in charge of their ‘Zero Waste’ program.

In his definition of it, he explained, “Zero waste is a goal that is both pragmatic and visionary, to guide people to emulate sustainable natural cycles, where all discarded materials are resources for others to use.”

And he continued, “Zero Waste means designing and managing products and processes to reduce the volume and toxicity of waste and materials, conserve and recover all resources, and not burn or bury them.”

While he doubted there would ever be ‘Zero Waste’ in the residential sector, he felt through Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle efforts, over 90 percent could be kept out of the landfill.

He mentioned how Toyota had decreased the amount sent to the landfill by 95 percent since 1999. And another company, Ricoh Electronics, has achieved a zero amount going to the landfill since 2001.

For the homeowner, a challenge should be to reduce consumption where practical.

When an item is no longer needed but still could be used by someone else, he mentioned Goodwill and the Salvation Army are always a good place to take them for Reuse.

(Church thrift shops and garage sales are other places. And the Hays County Food Bank can always use produce (such as the bushel of fresh peaches Gloria picked from her orchard and gave them).

We could continue to add more on his presentation here, but this is long enough for today so will include it in a future column.

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  Texas State University and worked on staff before retiring. For questions or comments, call 353-7432 or e-mail omaier@TxState.edu.