A Word About Recycling with Ollie Maier
Today we will hit on a variety of items taken from a recent Recycling Today newsletter. A little about what some other states/ countries are doing in relation to starting a recycling program, expanding their recycling efforts, and items on recycling both plastic and aluminum.
First off, we’ll go to another country and see how one is probably never too young to start a recycling program. The title of the article was: 17-year-old starts U-Recycle Initiative to promote recycling in Nigeria.
Moejoh Oluwaseyi is a first-year law student at the University of Lagos, Nigeria. Three years ago, she learned about Nigeria’s sustainable development goals and made a personal decision to work towards achieving these goals.
In 2017, she revived her school’s environmental club and worked with classmates to recycle more than 10,000 plastic bottles in three months. She also spoke to 3,000 girls on the importance of sanitation and received the Social Impact award with a $100 grant. This led her to start the U-Recycle Initiative Nigeria.
U-Recycle Initiative Nigeria is a team of more than 40 young people who are passionate about promoting sustainable recycling in Nigeria. They are involved in organizing workshops, supporting environmental clubs, building "U-Recycle Hubs" for separating waste, organizing seasonal competitions, awareness walks, beach cleanups and more.
Oluwaseyi and her team are working on educating the citizens on recycling. “The people in rural areas are still oblivious to the solution to this major problem,” she said, “A lot of work needs to be done to promote recycling and sustainable practices in Nigeria”
Switching to an expansion effort, I found the nationally known Waste Management company is adding to the current material recovery facility (MRF) in Salt Lake City. The $16 million “new, larger and technically advanced” MRF is programmed to be fully operational by early 2020.
Serving roughly 41,000 residential customers, when fully operational it will be capable of processing and sorting 35 tons of material per hour, which comes out to more than 700 tons of recyclables per day.
The facility’s machinery will have improved automation capabilities including advanced sorting optics and ballistic 2D and 3D motion separators. The older MRF already diverts more than 40 percent of its residential waste stream to recycling and compost so, with the improvements, this should increase significantly.
The new MRF will continue to be a single-stream operation accepting and sorting clean metal cans, plastic bottles and containers, cardboard, paper and newspaper. However, the new modernized MRF will not only increase capabilities but also produce a cleaner end product with higher value, which hopefully will lead to a greater diversion from the landfill.
Next, a small update on plastic bags. We know more and more environmentally concerned citizens are recommending the use of cloth bags or paper ones in lieu of plastic. Now a bill in Washington State is aimed at banning plastic bags altogether in that state.
If it becomes law, it will be the second state to completely ban them. However, even if banned, the state’s retailers would be given one year to use up their current supply of one-time use plastic bags.
One last item for today, Nespresso has made a $1.2 million commitment designed to better enable the recovery of its aluminum coffee capsules through New York City's curbside recycling program.
The funding is also aimed at better sorting and capturing of lightweight aluminum, including foil and other mixed metals.
It is believed that currently some 43,000 tons of aluminum foil and other mixed metals from New York City end up in landfills each year.
A nice note, once the Nespresso capsules are collected, they go to recycling firms that separate the aluminum from the coffee grounds. The coffee grounds will be turned into compost and topsoil while the aluminum is processed and recycled. So nothing is wasted after you’ve had that wonderful cup of wake-up morning coffee.
Till next week, do have an enjoyable and safe one.
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Ollie is a local citizen concerned with the environment and helping others. A retired Air Force fighter and instructor pilot, he is a graduate of Leadership San Marcos and received his degrees at Texas State University where he worked on staff before totally retiring. For questions or comments, he invites you to call him at 512-353-7432 or e-mail omaier@txstate.edu.
