Category Archives: Paper

Paper

Washington State Reaches Recycling Milestone

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The northwestern state of Washington has announced that it has reached a milestone in its recycling efforts.

During the year 2011,  Washington’s recycling rate exceeded fifty percent for the first time ever. The figures were released to the public from the Department of Ecology for Washington in late 2012.

The comprehensive waste diversion rate, which also factors in recycling, energy recovery, and product re-use, increased from fifty four percent in 2010 to fifty seven percent in 2011.

Residents and businesses recycled over one hundred and eight six thousand tons of material waste more than in the previous year, which resulted in a four percent increase. At the same time, landfill use decreased, as four percent less waste material was disposed of.

The state estimates that recyclables collection is over three and a half pounds per person per day. The individual amount is the highest ever for the state since it began measuring recycling efforts in 1986.

A spokesperson from the  Department of Ecology said that much of the improvement in the recycling rate can be attributed to increased rates for cardboard, metals, newspapers, and e-waste. With metals recycling seeing the largest increases.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: If you’ve set a recycling and waste reduction plan for your business, how are you keeping track of your financial and environmental successes? Making small changes and monitoring the results can help you achieve the best balance of saving money and saving the environment!

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?

NextLife Expands Material Waste Recycling Footprint

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NextLife Enterprise, a resin manufacturer and plastics recycler is contributing to jobs growth and green-friendly economic development by opening a new recycling facility in Rogers, Arkansas that will expand the company’s reach beyond the recycling of plastic material waste. The new plant currently has three sorting, shredding and baling lines and employs seventy people.

The facility will also process metal, aluminum, corrugated cardboard, and glass. Only twenty-five percent of the waste material recycled will be plastics, but that total amount is expected to be close to sixty millions pounds annually. Right now, the new plant is handling roughly one million pounds of waste material per week, but full production levels are expected for next year.

The new facility and increased reach of the materials recycled and recovered was something NextLife clients and consumers had been asking for. To meet customer needs, partnerships have been formed to handle special recycling concerns such as child safety seats and household appliances. The company goal for the new plant is to be a full-service material waste to recovery solution that handles each step of the recycling and reuse process for their customers.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: As more business and consumers embrace material waste recycling, more economic growth and job opportunities are created. What can your business do to expand in this in-demand field?

Businesses Go Green With Packaging Improvements

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Major brands such as Pepperidge Farm and Starbucks are implementing packaging reductions and recycling programs and as way to illustrate to consumers that they are taking environmental sustainability seriously and incorporating the importance of “going green” in their corporate missions and employee communications.

Campbell Soup Corporation of Camden, New Jersey is the parent company of Pepperidge Farms and it has set a goals of cutting one hundred million pounds of packaging from its product line by the year 2020.

In working toward this goal, Pepperidge Farm recently redesigned and reduced the amount of plastic used in its packages for Goldfish and Deli Flats by sixty five percent. The new design won the company the DuPont Packaging Award for Excellence in the category of Waste Reduction and Innovation. Success has also been seen in moving to lightweight bottles for the V8 juice drinks brand.

Starbucks Coffee is currently working on addressing its corporate goal of making their beverage cups recyclable by 2015 and ensuring that all locations have access to adequate recycling opportunities and providing the infrastructure to ensure success.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: Whether you’re a big, international company or a small, local business, setting environmental sustainability goals and identifying areas that can be improved upon, are a great way to help you “go green” while saving green!

 

Consumers Rewarded for Waste Recycling

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Who wouldn’t want an instant reward for waste recycling? Recycling kiosks are becoming more frequent sights in shopping malls and airports and providing consumers and travelers with an easy way to recycle items that are no longer wanted – and in return, possibly receiving cash or store credit.

Remag is the company behind the latest brand of recycling kiosks to become available to the public. Unlike other kiosk vendors that accept cell phones and other e-waste such as computer games, mobile devices, and computers, Remag is focusing on a new recycling sector: magazines and catalogs.

When consumers deposit their recyclables, the kiosk scans the item’s barcode. After accepting the paper, four coupons per item are dispensed to use for products at local grocery stores. Recyclers also have the choice to donate their rewards to charities.

The company is currently test piloting the kiosks through a popular grocery store chain in California. If all goes well, expansion to other chains throughout the country is expected.

Research has established that only one in four magazines are being waste recycled – but with the incentive of receiving store coupons for recycling, Remag hopes to boost that level.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: If your business is looking to expand its waste recycling footprint, thinking outside the box is essential! What services are missing in your community or business sector? Is there a way your organization can fill that gap?

 

Grocery Chain Switches To Paper Gift Cards

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The popular grocery store chain, Whole Foods, has recently made the decision to switch from plastic to paper and wood-made gift cards.

The supermarket chain, which specializes in organic produce, is eliminating its 100% recycled plastic gift certificates and replacing them with cards made of paper and responsibly harvested wood.

The new gift cards are manufactured using 50% post-consumer waste paper material and the Forest Stewardship Council has certified the wood and paper sources. Whole Foods has decided that the paper-made cards contain a lower carbon footprint because they are recyclable, compostable, reusable, and use less energy than the plastic cards to manufacture.

The gift cards are a popular item for sale in Whole Foods stores throughout the country, and the change reflects the Austin, Texas-based organization’s commitment to offer the most environmentally-friendly products available.

The change is expected to result in keeping close to 300,000 plastic gift cards out of landfills. Individual stores will continue to accept and waste recycle the plastic cards as customers use them as the transition takes place.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: Take a moment to look around your office or place of work. What products might you be able to replace with more cost-effective and environmentally friendly options? With a little research you might find some ways to save green while going green!

FedEx Earns Profits For Waste Recycling

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The package transportation company Federal Express didn’t create its waste recycling program overnight, but the business has shown how profits can result from reducing the amount of materials sent to landfills. The company currently estimates that it earns ten dollars for every one spent on recycling or recyclable products.

The company has indicated that they have recycled over ninety three million pounds of waste material since recycling operations began in 2006. Last year alone, close to fifty million pounds of materials were recycled.

In 2004, the company realized that waste recycling and environmental sustainability were concepts that weren’t going to fade away and that they need to start planning how to address them and incorporate them into the business model. The now successful plan started with very humble beginnings:  two balers that were part of a vendor’s “lease-to-buy” offer. Getting the waste materials to a central recycling location was simple, given FedEx’s hauling networks throughout the nation.

Despite the success, the company continues to look for way to be more sustainable. One recent change involves swapping out packing material such as peanuts and plastic air “pillows” for reused shredded cardboard shred that originates from the FedEx recycling center. That change satisfied customers demand and continues to save the company money.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: From humble beginnings grow great change! If your business is new to recycling, take a page from FedEx’s play book and start small. Control your costs, monitor growth, and take advantage of new recycling and reuse opportunities when they arise. You’ll be surprised what can be accomplished over time!

Airline Waste Recycles Aluminum

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The Alaska Air Airline Group is reporting that they diverted over two hundred and thirty tons of aluminum last year. That was enough recovered waste material to construct three new airplanes. This information comes from the carrier’s first corporate sustainability report.

In addition to the aluminum, the organization’s recycling programs are responsible for waste recycling more than eight hundred tons of material waste from landfills, including almost two hundred tons of paper.

The 2012 sustainability report documents the airline’s social responsibility efforts and outlines strategies and goals for improving their environmental stewardship. For the coming year, Alaska Air’s recycling goals are to increase its recycling collection to seventy percent and ensure that recycling is available in all flight kitchens and utilizing Forest Stewardship Council-certified material for juice containers.

Alaska Airlines services over ninety cities in Alaska and Hawaii, the continental United States, Canada, and Mexico.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: Does your business issue a yearly environmental stewardship and waste recycling goals report? If Alaska Airlines recycled enough aluminum to build three airplanes in one year, what might your business be able to do? You might be surprised how much you money and waste material you can save when you have a yearly report to hold yourself accountable to!

Waste Recycling At The University Of Colorado

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The University of Colorado is making a bold move and enhancing the recycling system in place for the school’s residence housing and cafeterias.

As the new school year started in early September, students, faculty, and staff at this Boulder, Colorad campus were greeted with a switch from separate recycling bins located throughout the dorms and eateries to single-stream bins.

The commingled recyclables, which included paper and bottles are being collected and processed by the non-profit group Eco-Cycle.

The switch to single-stream was done with the hope that recycling would become easier for all students and employees and therefore boost participation and the amount of materials that is waste recycled each month.

The University is staying with dual-stream recycling models for its academic and administrative building and over the year with collect data on which of the two methods was most successful for reducing waste disposal.

For this year, the school’s recycling goal is reduce the amount of landfill waste generated from one hundred and seventy pounds per person to one hundred and forty seven pounds per person pounds. The school is aiming for a waste recycling rate of ninety percent. The University began its recycling program in 1976 and its sports stadium is currently working toward a zero-waste goal.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: Not sure what kind of recycling program to try in your business? Learn a lesson from the University of Colorado and conduct a trial experiment! The tools and services for waste recycling are always changing and improving so if you are willing to try something new you might just stumble upon a great new way to save your company some money!

 

School District Ends Polystyrene Tray Use

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The Portland, Maine public school system has banned the use of lunch trays containing
single-use polystyrene in all cafeterias and meal distribution programs.

The school district will now be using lunch trays constructed of paperboard manufactured  in Maine. While the new trays will cost the school system more money to purchase, the price is being offset by funds saved during the last school year as part of a comprehensive waste reduction and waste recycling program which greatly reduced waste disposal costs for the district. It is estimated that the school diverted close to thirty thousand tons of waste from landfills as a result of the program.

The new, locally made and environmental friendly lunch trays will be in place when school resumes in September. The district has over seven thousands students enrolled in grades K-12 and has traditionally used almost half a million single-use lunch trays each school year. The switch will reduce further the amount of waste that can be recycled versus school waste that must be disposed of in landfills.

The school district’s goal is to divert as much as seventy percent of waste to recycling efforts. The cost savings in reduced disposal fees will help to fund greener options for the schools such as the paperboard lunch trays. The school system also believes that the recycling program allows students learn valuable lessons about environmental stewardship by showing how small actions can result in big changes for everyone.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: If you’re involved with your community’s school system, take a moment to learn more about their waste disposal and waste recycling efforts. Making some changes can result in big savings for schools and local taxpayers!