Recycle Your Old Electronics!

 Boro-Wide Recycling Corp. 

Maspeth, NY 718-416-1656 

www.BoroWideRecycling.com

Many people out there hold onto their old electronics. They have those old cell phones and computers that they have piled up in their garages or attics that they refuse to get rid of. Although some people are stubborn and won't recycle these old possessions, the word is getting out there and progress is being made.

A survey compiled by Call2Recycle, the lone North American free rechargeable battery collection program, indicates around 57 percent of Americans have old electronics that need to be recycled. However, around 44 percent of those surveyed said they don't know how to properly recycle their electronics, and some consumers even suffer from 'green guilt.' (http://goo.gl/kSP4V)

Cell phones are the top electronic, but old computers, TVs, cordless phones, and rechargeable batteries are all a close second.

"We see this as a positive. Whether due to the recovering economy or for other reasons, consumers are stimulated to think about the proper disposal of old electronics and conscious of the impact today's actions have on the state of our planet," said Carl Smith, Call2Recycle CEO and president, in a press statement. "The 2012 survey shows that Americans increasingly feel an obligation to recycle, and that they share responsibility with manufacturers and others to reduce the environmental impact of many products."

Progress is being made to make e-waste recycling an easier process for consumers and product suppliers, while public awareness also increases (http://goo.gl/kSP4V).

Kicking Off Earth Week

 Boro-Wide Recycling Corp. 

Maspeth, NY 718-416-1656 

www.BoroWideRecycling.com

On April 22^nd of each year, Earth Day comes around as a way to promote an environmental movement to help people become aware of the term “going green.” 

Some people get together with groups of friends, colleagues and family and plant trees, help clean up parks and present art shows. Some colleges are having Earth Week, which will allow students to do projects to make their campuses more beautiful.

“Our nature is starting to slowly decrease because we’re getting all these houses and malls,” Endless Mountains Nature Center volunteer coordinator Jessica Fasulo said. “We’re just trying to clean up the small part of nature that we do have.”

Lingering damage from last September’s flooding was removed by Nature Center volunteers on Sunday in Tunkhannock, including the remains of a trailer that washed onto one of the islands near the center (http://goo.gl/zDAVQ).

According to Fasulo, the metal and scrap were lying on top of flowers, which was preventing them from growing. With a little TLC, these flowers should be back up and blooming in no time.

If you have any questions or need some scrap metal picked up, give us a call at 718-416-1656 or visit www.borowide.com.

UW Trash Sorting Event A Success

The University of Washington wanted to find out how much garbage is actually garbage. On April 11, about 40 volunteers dressed up in their cover-up suits, rubber gloves and joined a sorting team to sort through over 1,300 tons of trash. 

This event was to explore how much compostable and recyclable materials are still being thrown away on campus, and this event has may people’s interests growing more and more each year.

Bags of trash were emptied onto tables and volunteers sifted through materials in search of compostable material, cans, bottles, paper and other recyclable materials. The party-like atmosphere included popular music, sorting games and challenges (king5.com).

When all was said and done, the teams found that 51 percent of the garbage was compostable, 20 percent could be recycled and 29 percent was actually garbage.

The first “Trash-In” took place on campus back in 1970 to show how much waste was associated with students. These students and faculty members collected trash from around campus and sorted it into categories. The recycled materials were returned to the original producers for reprocessing. It was from this even that these recycling programs began.

Staring on Earth Day, April 20, 2012, hi-tech, solar-powered kiosks will be on campus to collect composting, recycling and garbage. The University of Washington will be the first university nationwide to use this system to capture all three waste types in an outdoor public area (king5.com).

If you have any questions of what should be recycled or thrown out, please let us know and call us at 718-416-1656.

Where Does All Of Our Garbage Go?

 Boro-Wide Recycling Corp.

Maspeth, NY 718-416-1656

www.BoroWideRecycling.com

It happens each week: The day we need to put out the garbage cans to the curb for it to be collected and the garbage truck drives away. But where does it all go?

A team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology decided to find out where it all went. In 2009, they began attaching transmitter chips to thousands of pieces of garbage. They tossed into it the garbage bin and followed the path that our garbage takes: the meanderings of electronic waste as it headed for distant shores, of ratty old sneakers that ran the equivalent of a dozen marathons, of printer cartridges that traversed the continent not once but twice on the road to recycling (online.wsj.com).

This experiment brought to the forefront the secret about our garbage: how much we produce, what it contains and where it goes when it leaves our bins.

The official trash tally for the average American shows that we toss out 4.4 pounds of trash each day, with about a third being recycled and the rest going to landfills. But the most recent survey conducted by Columbia University and the trade journal BioCycle shows that we throw out 7.1 pounds a day, and a quarter of that gets recycled (online.wsj.com).

At this staggering amount of trash on a daily basis, we are on track to produce 102 tons of waste over our lifetime. 

The best way to reduce trash in the first place is to waste less. Try to avoid disposable plastic bags or bottled water, and buy used electronics. Also consider when you are buying something if you will use it for years to come or if it will be thrown out in a few months. Anything you can do to help avoid the piling up of garbage will be helpful in the long run.

 If you have any questions regarding your garbage or recycling issues, please call us at 718-416-1656 and we can assist you in the best way possible!

To read the full article featured in The Wall Street Journal, click HERE. 

Fast-Food Chains Could Make Big Bucks Going Green

Boro-Wide Recycling Corp.

Maspeth, NY 718-416-1656

www.BoroWideRecycling.com

Back in 2008, a mother in Sweden wrote a letter to Max Burgers, a burger chain, complaining to do away with the kids’ meal boxes. The company responded by taking away all of the boxes for their kids meals in all 75 restaurants. They told customers it reduced waste, and there was not one complaint. In fact, the sales of the kids’ meals rose.

This same burger chain also reassessed its whole enterprise and looked for ways to cut costs and save money through being environmentally-friendly. It had energy-efficient grass roofs installed on 12 new restaurants and the energy consumption was cut by 20 percent. The chain buys only wind power and offsets all of its carbon emissions by planting trees in Uganda. And in 2008, it started putting CO2 labels in its menus, quantifying exactly how much carbon dioxide, from field to fryer, is emitted in making each dish (time.com).

“One of the problems being a burger business is, of course, the beef,” says Max’s Burgers Chief Sustainability Officer Par Larshans, noting that the meat industry is responsible for about 18% of global greenhouse-gas emissions. It shows that its famous cheese and bacon beef burger produced five times more carbon dioxide than its vegetarian burger and six more times than its fish sandwich. They hope it would help customers make a better choice. And it worked.

Customers started eating more non-beef burgers and helped push Max’s to open 45 new restaurants from 2005-2011. The green initiatives taken by the burger joint seemed to boost customer loyalty and it drew in new customers. And it isn’t just Max’s that is showing positive sales results. There are others restaurants that have dramatically increased their businesses. Some of the restaurants in the US include Chipotle, Naked Pizza and Otarian.

 To summarize, it seems as though customers are all about being environmentally-friendly and eating healthy. If fast-food chains can continue to produce what the customer wants, business should continue to improve.

e-Cycle Launching Campaign To Promote Responsible Mobile Reuse

Boro-Wide Recycling Corp.

Maspeth, NY 718-416-1656

www.BoroWideRecycling.com

In response to recent research reports revealing startling discoveries regarding the failure to protect sensitive mobile data, e-Cycle Founder and CEO Christopher Irion announced the launch of a campaign encouraging businesses and organizations to implement responsible mobile reuse and recycling as a key component of their mobile security strategies (sfgate.com).

According to Irion, mobile data security has never been more critical for businesses, regardless of how big or small they are, or what industry they are in. Many businesses do not consider secure mobile reuse and recycling.

“The legal and financial ramifications of sensitive data ending up in the wrong hands are staggering,” Irion said. “Of greater concern are the many organizations that do attempt to put safeguards in place but actually fail to retire their devices in a secure way. We want to raise awareness to the fact that responsible mobile reuse and recycling must be a critical component of any mobile data security plan.”

The new campaign will focus on educations companies about the benefits of mobile security. Some of the elements of the campaign are below:

• Media outreach, email campaigns, expert advice articles and public speaking events at industry functions.

• Recommendations on how to build a secure mobile recycling strategy.

• Benefits of using R2 certified companies

How to maintain data protection by avoiding companies that resell devices on websites such as eBay, reviewing hiring practices and facility security of partners and carefully reading the terms and conditions in regards to data deletion policies of partners.

e-Cycle’s campaign comes at a critical time as a recent study showed that only 39 percent of some 4,000 organizations has these security controls in place.

Have a question of how to recycle your phone or anything else? Be sure to contact us at 718-416-1656 or www.borowiderecycling.com and we can assist you!

Plastic Bottles Make Soccer Uniforms

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Boro-Wide Recycling Corp.

Maspeth, NY 718-416-1656

www.BoroWideRecycling.com

Who would have thought that recycled plastic bottles would be used to make sports uniforms? I’m sure not a lot of people think of it that way, but Nike does.

The major sportswear outfitter has a uniform design that is intended for soccer teams such as the USA, France, Brazil and Poland. Each uniform would be manufactured using an average of 13 recycled plastic bottles, according to Nike’s website (wasterecyclingnews.com).

Also on the website, the shirts for the uniforms will contain at least 96% recycled polyester, while the fabric of the shorts will be made with 100% recycled polyester.

Back in 2010, every World Cup team wore jerseys made from recycled polyester. Each uniform that was made was created from an average of eight recycled bottles.

The uniforms are made by taking discarded PET plastic bottles and melting them down and converted into fabric to create the apparel (wasterecyclingnews.com).

Nike recently released new uniforms for Team USA Basketball, which features an average of 22 recycled plastic bottles per uniform.

If you have any questions about recycled bottles, please be sure to call us at 718-416-1656.