America Recycles Day

The town I live in, Nottingham started a recycling center in 1973 and is the oldest consecutively operating center in the nation. Who would have known that a small New Hampshire town would hold such a title. I bring my paper, cardboard, metal, aluminum, glass, plastic and other items there on a regular basis.

If you need to "pledge" to get yourself in gear and start recycling then take action today. November 15th is America Recycles Day and the national Recycling Coalition has a "Take-the-Pledge" campaign asking Americans to sign up to commit to recycling.

As the June 7, 2007 Economist article "The truth about Recycling" explains in 1980 Americans only recycled 9.6% of municipal rubbish and today it is 32%. Now, with the increase in recycling there has been increases in municipal waste also so don't jump for joy quite yet. Can Americans do better? We sure can, take a look at Jeremy Williams site with information on efforts in the EU. I say lets set a goal of 60% recycling like the Netherlands.

Recycling is better for the environment than burning or burying municipal waste. This was the conclusion of a life-cycle analyses conducted by the Technical University of Denmark and the Danish Topic Centre on Waste. The study conducted 200 scenarios on 55 life-cycle analyses comparing the impact of recycling versus burning or burying.

So, lets all kick-it up a notch and not only recycle, but lets reduce our overall waste. The best way to do this is to weigh your trash for a week or a month. You'll be amazed at how much waste an individual or business or family can generate.

Our household weighed our waste for a month and with some minor changes in purchases we cut our waste by more than 12%. We continue to look at ways to reduce it even further, small steps count so take a step now.