Valley Green Tips: Landfill less

Have you visited your local landfill lately? It’s a landscape most don’t experience — a growing landscape of dirt and trash of all shapes, sizes and smells. It’s a gray place, where birds screech and vermin scatter in search of scraps of food.

Despite its lack of greenery, a visit to your local landfill will have two positive outcomes: 1) You’ll be impressed by the hard work of the sanitation workers who toil there to ensure that landfill space is maximized and buried trash is safely contained. And 2) You’ll be more convinced that recycling can, and does, make a huge difference on our Earth and to our pocketbooks. After all, landfilling is an expensive proposition. It requires lots of land, manpower, and containment materials; and there are often associated environmental clean-up costs.

Conversely, by reducing waste, and recycling or reusing what waste you can, the life of a landfill is extended, and less land is needed for landfills. Recycling also creates more jobs than landfilling, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Excerpted from its “Puzzled About Recycling’s Value?” publication, the EPA states that recycling has made a vital contribution to job creation and economic development.

If up until now you’ve elected the convenience option for trash removal where you might pay a little more to not have to recycle, there are simple ways to get started recycling which could be as easy as making a phone call and adding an extra waste can for your recyclables.

Tips:

1. Decide if you want to set up a collection service with a hauler, or if you plan to haul recyclables yourself to your local transfer station. See Green Team list (www.mwvgreenteam.org) of local transfer stations and which recyclables are accepted there.

Options for recycling in the Mount Washington Valley have increased just in the last two years. Waste Management now provides large scale hauling and single-stream recycling containers for commercial operations. North Conway Incinerator provides hauling service with a variety of sizes of containers for large and small operations. For Our Kids Recycling Services provides program development, hauling services to residents and small businesses and a reusable match-up program that matches items being discarded against non-profit organizations’ wish lists. You can find contact information for these and other local recycling services at www.mtwashingtonvalley.org.

2. Print out the list of what’s acceptable by the service you elect, and keep it near where you’ll be sorting recyclables from trash. Most transfer stations and recycling services allow you to recycle the following:

* Brown corrugated cardboard.

* Mixed paper (envelopes, cereal boxes, junk mail, egg cartons, etc.)

* Aluminum cans.

* Glass.

* Plastics.

* Tin cans.

* Newsprint and magazines

3. Pick a location in your home, garage or backyard/patio that is easily accessible for everyone in your household. If your storage area is convenient, recycling becomes a daily habit.

4. Select storage bins. Stackable plastic bins, crates, boxes and grocery bags are good options. Make sure that your recycling containers look different from your trash receptacles, and are near your trash for ease of use. Many start with a bin or box for paper, one for non recyclable waste and one for all others, and further separate later as needed. There are also co-mingled recycling services that don’t require further separation for those looking for easy ways to make a difference to their town budgets and the Earth.

5. Now begin recycling.

6. For those already recycling, know that many services have expanded their list of what is considered recyclable. For example, in some towns, you can now recycle aluminum foil. Simply ball it up and throw it in with aluminum cans.

7. Other ways to help is to make smarter purchases. Select brands that have less packaging to throw away or packed in containers you can reuse. Use bulk food stations where you can fill reusable containers with grocery items. Avoid buying single portion sized snacks. You can pack snacks from larger bags in reusable snack containers to save money and reduce waste. And make sure you shop with reusable shopping bags.

8. Other ways to practice the art of reuse: Use both sides of the paper before putting it in the recycling bin; often you can even reuse junk mail as notepaper. Donate unwanted furniture and other household items in good condition to church and non-profit thrift shops.

Valley Green Tips is brought to you by the Mount Washington Valley Green Team, a non-profit group dedicated to greening the valley through programs including Valley Community Gardens, MWV Friends of Recycling and MWV Climate Challenge. For more information, visit www.mwvgreenteam.org where you can become a member and share your own green tips.

A girl tosses items into a recycling bin located in North Conway Village.