Recycling Green Tips
How much do we recycle?
In America. According to the Container Recycling Institute,
American consumers purchase an average of over 500 million beverage
bottles and cans every day (about 200 billion per year). Only 1 in 3
are recycled. In 2006, Americans recycled about 34.7% of all beverage
containers sold (45.2% of all aluminum cans, 23.5% of PET plastic
bottles, 27.8% of glass bottles).
Here at ACU.
On campus, our recyclables are picked up weekly by the Environmental
Recycling Center (ERC). According to the ERC, each year we recycle 8
tons of paper with the blue bag recycling program, nearly 1 ton of plastic and 8-10 tons of cardboard.
Did you know?
- According to the EPA,
recycling 1 ton of paper saves nearly 19 mature trees, 7,778 thousand
gallons of water and 4,556 kilowatt hours of electricity. That's enough
energy to power the average American home for over five months.
- Packaging
constitutes 41% of all paper used and is the single largest category of
paper use (Pulp & Paper North American Factbook, 1995).
- Most cardboard boxes contain over 25% recycled fibers (Bureau of International Recycling).
- According
to the EPA, Americans recycled 34% of all PET plastic soft drink
bottles and 29% of HDPE milk and water bottles in 2005.
- In Abilene, the ERC can take all plastics except Styrofoam.
Create your own recycling bin
The cheapest way of doing this is just to buy a plastic trash bin &
put a recycling sign on it (they also make stickers you can buy
cheaply online). If you want to buy a recycling bin just do a Google search (they come in a wide range of styles and prices).
ACU employees: You provide your own containers for non-paper recyclables & WFF can provide trash bags for these if you ask.
AbileneFreecycle
Freecycle promotes reusing resources by facilitating stuff swapping. It is a group for everyone in the Abilene area
who has something to give away or could use something for free. Learn more >>
University
Purchasing has been working hard to help ACU achieve its goal to be a
greener campus. They are introducing two new services that will help
achieve this important goal and are asking for your assistance and
support in these efforts.
Bulb Eater
The purchase of a Premium Bulb Eater provides both product and service
that exceeds the highest standards of compliance, safety, efficiency
and cost. The Bulb Eater crushes fluorescent lamps and filters mercury
for proper disposal. A fluorescent lamp consists of a glass shell, a
high vacuum, a small amount of liquid mercury, evaporated mercury, some
phosphor powder, the metal end-caps and heated filaments. When lamps
are sent to landfills or incinerated as an alternative disposal method,
mercury vapors are released that can travel over 200 miles. Each year,
an estimated 600 million fluorescent lamps are disposed of in U.S.
landfills; they produce an estimated 30,000 pounds of mercury waste.
Proper disposal of lamps together with the recycling of the lamps will
greatly reduce the mercury dilemma and create a much safer environment.
Although ACU purchases ECO friendly fluorescent lamps that are approved
to be disposed of in the landfill, they still contain a small
percentage of mercury. They will be collecting bulbs at the University Purchasing Warehouse (
ACU map, building 48). They need your assistance to gather all used fluorescent lamps and deliver them to the Warehouse for disposal.
Battery Recycle Program
The university uses an abundance of batteries. University Purchasing
and Physical Resources Transportation Shop are working with a local
vendor for proper disposal of batteries. Please drop off all of your
used batteries at the warehouse. Example of batteries to turn in: D, C,
AA, AAA, 9 volt, etc. All vehicle batteries need to be dropped off at
the Physical Resources Transportation Shop.
Vegetable Oil to Bio-Diesel Conversion
Wondering what to do with your left over cooking oil?
The Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Department will accept
donations of waste vegetable oil for their Bio-Diesel processing
project. Contact
Jim Cooke at 674-2683.
Plastic Recycling
Recycle softcover books and notebooks (if you remove spiral) with the rest of your paper.
Brown paper
products are considered cardboard, so put your paper sacks, etc., with
your cardboard recycling rather than in the blue bags.
Paper Recycling
Parts adapted with permission from the Harvard Green Campus Initiative
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