Recycling Green Tips - Reuse, Recycle, Restore

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 plastics (except styrofoam) by placing them in a plastics recycling bin on campus or at an Abilene drop-off location. Or, create your own recycling bin.

Softcover Book and Notebook 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.