Hey kids! This edition of "Recycling makes $ and sense" is for you. Everyone knows if you want to increase recycling efforts, young folks get the message and can teach others. You kids did a great job at last year’s “Beautification Day.” Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, 4-H kids and young family members headed out all over West Milford last April to clean up the town and get as much trashed recycled as possible, and you young folks did an awesome job. What more can kids do?
Paradise Knoll School has a book in the library called “A Kid’s Guide to Saving the Planet,” and below are some amazing facts from that book.
There is a sea of plastic garbage in the Pacific Ocean that is the size of Texas. Recycle your plastic bags when you go shopping at the supermarket. This helps them be reused instead of being swallowed by more than one million marine mammals
Americans throw away 2.5 million bottles of plastic every hour. Recycling them also reduces our tons of trash, which costs over $80 per ton to dispose of. All plastics in West Milford are recyclable from #1 through #7. Turn your plastic trash over and see if you can find what number it is.
84 percent of household waste can be recycled, including food scraps and yard waste. Compost those coffee grounds, egg shells and salad greens. Did you know it’s funny to watch a goat eat banana peels?
Recycling children’s clothes is a great way to reuse things that are still good that you have outgrown. Try Free-cycle to keep good clothes in service. If any clothing is not nice enough to be wearable, bring them and your cans to the town Recycling Center where the big red clothing box will recycle them for rags and carpets and keep them from becoming trash.
A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate two million gallons of fresh water. Ask your parent to take any used oil to the Township Recycling Department. Sometimes, mechanic shops burn this oil to heat their building in the winter time. This winter has been so cold, West Milford Auto Recyclers ran out of this oil!
In some places around the world, empty bottles are used as construction materials. Entire schools and houses have been built out of both glass and plastic bottles!
It costs about $80 a ton to throw away trash in our town, but recycling materials are sold and bring money into the town. Plus, West Milford gets grant money for every ton we recycle instead of throw away, so thank you for your recycling help, and for making a difference in both our community and our world.
Keep up the great work of conserving our materials and saving our town's (and your parents') money. Teach a neighbor, or a friend, or especially a grown-up who should know better what can be recycled in West Milford. See you at the town picnic at next year’s Beautification Day! A shout out to:
Kristen Callahan for recycling her yogurt cups every day at Paradise Knoll School.
Lois Abate from bringing home all the cardboard her job throws away and recycling it in West Milford. Cardboard is a good money-maker in West Milford. We wish more people did this.
Gil Griffith for great household recycling.
The United Methodist Church at Newfoundland which separates their recycling. Great job!