November 15^th is America Recycles Day. This is an excellent opportunity to celebrate the monetary, energy and resource savings provided by recycling. This is also a great way to improve education about what is recycled and motivate people to recycle more. Since the first ARD in 1997, recycling has continued to grow across the nation. Recycling puts resources back into our economy.

It is time to join the movement and keep America beautiful. Visit the official America Recycles website to get more information on taking your own pledge to recycle, organizing a community event, and to discover more about the organization.

Reasons to Recycle –

• Recycling is the easiest thing we all can do 365 days a year to save energy, conserve natural resources and create green jobs
• Our national recycling rate is 34.5%
• Avoids greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to removing more than 33 million cars from the road each year
• Sends 87 million tons of material to a useful second life instead of the landfill

Give a second life to materials

• Steel – Food cans could become part of a bike or even a bridge.
• Aluminum – Your soda cans could become part of a stadium. Venues like the Baltimore Ravens football stadium are made with recycled aluminum.
• Glass – Recycling one glass bottle saves enough energy to power a television for 20 minutes.
• Paper – In 2012, Americans trashed enough paper to cover 20,500 football fields in paper…. three feet deep.
• Plastic – The amount of plastic bottles recycled in 2012 provided enough raw materials needed to make nearly 8 million XL t-shirts

When it comes to recycling, every community is different. Check with your local solid waste & recycling programs to confirm that they accept these recycling practices.

• Plastic bottle caps are usually recyclable along with the bottle
• Although you can’t recycle your whole pizza box, you can tear off and recycle the top half – as long as it is grease free!
• Reduce and reuse first to shrink your environmental footprint.
• Recycling is not just in the kitchen. Don’t trash your shampoo bottles and toilet paper rolls just because they are in the bathroom.
• Metals are among the most valuable materials in the waste stream and almost all recyclers welcome aluminum and steel cans
• Reduce unwanted mail by unsubscribing at CatalogChoice.org.
• 100 million wireless phones go out of use each year, according to the U.S. EPA. Donate your out-of-use cell phone to a local charity or find a drop-off facility near you.
• Purchase products that contain recycled materials to keep them in demand.
• Practice the 4 R’s – reduce, reuse, recycle, recover.

As our population grows so does our level of consumption, which is why it is so important to for us as consumers to exhaust all our efforts to reduce, reuse, recycle and recover items before throwing them away. Let’s continue to keep America beautiful! Do all you can to find a “new home” for your unwanted items.

“What is the use of a house if you don’t have a decent planet to put it on?”
– Harry David Thoreau