Category Archives: Recycle Reuse Niches

Unique Waste Recycling and Reuse Niches

Texas Hotels Offer Composting

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A Texas company has launched a new innovation for those in the hotel and overnight accommodations industry. Texas Disposal Systems has recently partnered with the Four Season Hotel in the capital city of Austin to offer visitors and guests the first ever, in-room food waste recycling and composting program.

The goal of the partnership is to divert ninety percent of the hotel’s waste from ending up in local landfills; thus reducing waste disposal costs while offering environmentally aware consumers the opportunity to “go green” and recycle unwanted food while traveling for work or pleasure.

The on-site composting program combine food scraps and waste from the hotel’s restaurants, bars, and coffee cafe areas and then combined with organic outdoor waste such as landscaping trimmings from trees, shrubs  flowers, and grasses that are a part of the Four Seasons’ property.

All of the hotel’s organic waste will be used to create nutrient-rich compost by local company, Garden-Ville. Which will then be sold as well as used by the hotel for grounds-keeping.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: Not only is the on-site composting program offered by the Four Seasons an economically and environmentally smart one, but its partnership with two other local businesses also helps to strengthen the regional green economy – creating more jobs and profits for all involved! What kinds of partnerships can your business establish to create something similar?

Washington Collects Holiday Styrofoam

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Clark County in the northwestern state of Washington held its first even holiday Styrofoam recycling event in early January of this year. The county believed that close to two hundred and seventy five residents participated and dropped off for recycling over three thousand pounds of Styrofoam.

The Clark County Environmental Services offices is responsible for coordinating community recycling events at various locations during the year. This was the first time that a special event was held for Styrofoam – an item that can be recycled but all too often ends up in the trash heading for a landfill.

The county estimates that these special events are responsible for collecting up to two hundred and fifty thousand pounds of recyclable materials and hazardous waste items with each individual country event collection approximately three thousand pounds of waste materials for recycling.

The Environmental Services Department has made an effort to collect waste materials such as oil because it has value on the re-use market. Other unwanted items such as furniture, textiles and housewares are donated to country social service agencires and not for profit groups.

County officials decided to launch the Styrofoam recycling collection event in January due to its high use a packing material for gifts purchased over the holidays. Due to the success, it is expected to become an annual recycling event.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: If your town is looking to reduce space and fees paid to landfills, increasing recycling efforts is a way to do it. Does your town make an effort to collect Styrofoam? Maybe they should!

Recycling Cigarettes for Cash

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New York State may become the first state in the nation to offer its residents a bottle-bill-deposit type law for cigarettes. The propsed initiatives would require a small deposit upon purchase of cigarette packs and then pay out a return when the filters or “butts” are returned for recycling.

Queens Assemblyman Michael DenDekker proposed the new recycling program, which would have a one cent deposit and return for each cigarette.

While the concept might seem a bit strange, non-profit groups around the country have recently started working with recyclers who use cigarette filters for re-manufacturing purposes – receiving cash for every pound collected. Because of this, DenDekker believes there is a legitimate market for the unwanted butts that either end up in the trash or as road-side litter.

The New York Commissioner of Health would need to formally approve of the program, and a minimum of one redemption facility would need to be established in each county. Part of the initiative also includes an educational campaign geared to inform smokers about the dangers and environmental consequences of improperly disposed of cigarettes.

Similar to bottle bills, the idea could also reward ordinary citizens and groups with a cash incentive for redeeming cigarette butts that have been disposed of as litter.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: When it comes to managing waste and recycling, it always pays to be thinking “outside the box” and two steps ahead of your competition. Today’s crazy idea could very well become tomorrow’s reality!

Increases in Improper Disposal of Pharmaceutical Waste

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The state of Wisconsin has determined that “take-back” programs for pharmaceuticals and prescription drugs have resulted in only two percent of unwanted and unused over the counter and prescription medications being collected for proper disposal. This latest news was recently released by a study conducted by the the University of Wisconsin-Extension and the Wisconsin Product Stewardship Institute.

The research study showed that the ninety eight percent of medications not brought back for disposal are generally flushed down a toilet, garbage disposal, or sink drain, thrown in the trash for general disposal in landfills, or left in bathroom medicine cupboards well past the effective expiration date. All of these actions can create both environmental hazards to both land and water sources or cause danger to pets, animals, or other humans should the drugs be consumed accidentally or by confusing with other medication.

It is believed that close to one-third of over thirteen million pounds of all classifications of pharmaceutical drugs sold in Wisconsin annually becomes unused and therefore must be properly disposed of. While many municipalities throughout the state have launched different kinds of voluntary drug collection programs, all of the programs face problems such as cost to administer and increasing public knowledge of the importance of disposing of their medications in a safe and proper manner.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: If you or your business works with medical and pharmaceutical waste, what opportunities exist or can be created to collect the millions of pounds of unwanted and unused medications? The person who comes up with a cost-effective solution will become one wealthy person!

Program Diverts Books From Landfills

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Goodwill Industries of Columbus, Ohio is partnering with Green Marketing to provide extra use to unwanted textbooks, encyclopedias and other books while keeping them out of regional landfills.

The collaboration is designed to take unsellable books from Goodwill’s collection locations and transform them into paper towels, facial tissue, and toilet paper.

Since launching the initiative, donations of unwanted books have increased significantly at the nineteen Goodwill locations in the region. The organization stockpiles the books that have no retail re-selling value and when a large enough quantity is amassed, they contact Green Marketing to arrange a pick-up for hauling away. While the amount paid for the unwanted books is small – an average of fifteen dollars per ton – the cost savings for waste disposal of the books to a landfill is significant. Goodwill can now gladly welcome any unwanted book knowing that if it does not sell on the retail floor, then can still earn a bit for recycling.

Green Marketing recycles unwanted books throughout the United States through an affiliated company, Book-Destruction.com and hopes to roll its program out to other Goodwill locations who are interested in participating.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: Green Marketing offers a great solution to organizations and businesses who may have an excess of books or paper products. Why pay waste disposal fees when you can possibly earn money through recycling?

Clover Technologies Strikes Gold With Recycled Cartridges

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Clover Technologies, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of recycled printer cartridges has reached such a high consumer demand for its products that the supply of recycled cartridges it purchases from OfficeMax and Staples are no longer sufficient. In order to procure the needed waste materials, Clover has created Evolve Recycling, a subsidiarity responsible for procuring cartridges directly from consumers.

Depending on the printer cartridge, Evolve will reimburse customers up to ten dollar per piece. The company also provides shipping boxes and prepaid postage so consumers are relieved of all mailing costs.

Evolve may be a unique idea, but it was created out of necessity as its parent company needs a constant and reliable source of unwanted and used cartridges for its manufacturing process. Clover sells over two million re-furbished cartridges for ink and laser printers every month throughout North America so a decrease in cartridge collection can negatively impact future production and sales.

Re-manufactured printer cartridges are responsible for fifteen percent of the cartridge market, with steady year over year growth as both individual and business consumers desire less expensive printing options made from recycled materials.

Evolve currently collects close to eleven thousand unwanted cartridges per month from individuals and businesses. The company’s goal is to collect one million cartridges per month by the close of 2013.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: If your business is feeling the squeeze from procuring waste materials from other re-sellers, consider trying the Evolve model and source directly from consumers. Recycling becomes attractive when there’s a “green” incentive!

The EPA Electronics Recycling Challenge

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Earlier in 2012, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) started the electronics recycling challenge, aimed at increasing the number of computers, cell phones, and other electronics and media devices, being recycled properly and safely.  Many of the nation’s most popular electronics manufacturers and retailers immediately signed up and agreed to participate. Best Buy, LG Electronics, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp Electronics, Sprint Nextel, Staples, Dell, Sony, and Nokia are all participants.

However, two of the largest names in the electronics industry did not agree to join – Apple and Hewlett-Packard (HP). The products they make – from the iPad to the iPhone to printers and computers, can be found in nearly every home or business. While both companies have refused to comment on their refusal to join, it is expected that the the companies’ took issue with the challenges requirement to only utilize R2 or e-Stewards certified electronics recyclers and that outcome data be shared with the EPA and the public.

Despite their refusal to participate, both brands do currently offer recycling programs for their products and will continue to work with the EPA to help address the concerns of environmental impacts caused by e-waste.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: Recycling your businesses e-waste is an important concern – heavy fines await you if you try to dispose of computers improperly. Making sure the brand you buy has an established and convenient recycling program is something worth considering!

Recycling Cigarettes

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This new product niche for recycling waste materials might be hard to imagine, but it’s true! The Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company, a New Mexico-based subsidiary of Reynolds American Inc., the United State’s second-largest cigarette manufacturer, is forming a partnership with TerraCycle Inc. to recycle used cigarette butts into a material used in the manufacturing of railroad ties, park benches, and shipping pallets.

The Cigarette Waste Brigade, which is publicized through TerraCycle’s website, brings together individuals and trash-battling civic groups to spread the word about the importance of saving and collecting used cigarette butts. Groups can then send them collected materials to the company through a prepaid shipping envelope. According to the non-profit group, Keep America Beautiful, cigarette butts make up close to forty percent of all litter on our nation’s roads and highways.

The incentive for collection is that for every pound of cigarette butts sent to TerraCycle, the sender will receive credits that can be exchanged for a variety of charitable gifts, or can be used to make a donation to a charity of their choice.

TerraCycle will recycle the cigarette filters and used them to create pellets that can be used in creating a wide variety of products. It took close to two years for the company to develop and refine the process to recycle the cigarette filters, which are made of with a mixture of paper, ash, tobacco, and a cellulose acetate filter.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: Cigarette smoking is a habit shared by many Americans but it only took one company to come up with a way to turn used cigarette butts into a recycled material that can be sold to manufacturers!

Market Grows For Green Packaging

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Wondering where growth is happening in the green products market? The packaging market for green materials was worth nearly one hundred and ten billion dollars in 2011 and is expected to reach one hundred and eighty billion by 2018.

Europe is leading the world market in green packaging, due to the high levels of  regulations throughout the European Union and less available space for landfills. North American businesses are in second place but still significantly below their counterparts across the Atlantic. The surprise may come from green packaging businesses in the Asia Pacific region as countries such as China, India, and Indonesia are expected to experience the fastest growth in the adoption of green packaging in the upcoming years.

A few of the major factors moving individual and business consumers to embrace and demand green packaging include a growing public awareness about energy consumption, carbon emissions,  and waste recycling and reduction goals designed to save on waste disposal costs while helping to protect the environment.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: If your business is in waste materials recycling or green packaging, there’s plenty of opportunities to expand in the global market. What are you doing to make some “green” while helping to preserve the environment?

Waste Recycle Election Year Political Signs

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The city of Denver, Colorado will be offering a new home to political yard signs in the weeks following the November 6th presidential and local elections.

A regionally based independent business, Alpine Waste & Recycling is once again offering its annual election day Yard Sign Recycling Campaign and will make available to residents special containers in which to waste recycle no longer wanted political placards, including both window and yard signs.

The idea to establish a special program for recycling the materials in political yard signs began in 2007 by Alpine’s recycling unit and has been offered every year since. The majority of political signs are constructed from HDPE plastic or corrugated plastic and have demand in the recycling and re-sale market.

After municipalities collect the  yard signs through their standard recycling collection, they are transported to Alpine’s recycling facility and prepared for plastics processing. Ultimately  the former political signs will be turned into plastic pellets. The pellets are then used in the manufacturing of various consumer items, such as trash cans, toys, lawn chairs, and other solid plastic goods.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: Election Day happens every year so what is your community’s plan for waste recycling the materials in political signs? If you’re not recycling and reusing, then you’re taking up valuable and costly space in your local landfill!