A Recycling Primer

Recycling and Disposal Information for Non-Blue Bin Items

“Humans have this funny idea that when you get rid of something, it’s gone.”

--Jim Puckett, director of Basel Action Network (Ban), tracking the global travel of hazardous waste

Notes

1. For Milford Public Works website, go to the city website (http://www.ci.milford.ct.us), then click on City Departments, then Public Works.
2. Bulk Pick-up happens twice in Milford during the summer months, at specified times. Call Public Works for the time in your neighborhood (203-783-3265), or see Public Works website.
3. “Gripevine”, a newspaper column in the Milford Mirror, often has recycling information. See in paper, or e-mail Gripevine2005@aol.com
4. HazWaste Central is the regional collection site for hazardous materials. It is at the Regional Water  Authority’s HQ on 90 Sargent Dr. in New Haven, off I-95, Exit 46 (203-401-2712), open Saturdays  before noon, May-September.
5. The “Hot Air” article referred to is included on another page of this ECC website.
6. Items below marked with a star * are classified as “electronics waste”, or “e-waste.”
7. Often, you can Google items you want to recycle and find information that way.

General Recycling Information Sources

1. www.worldwatch.org/ct/20040810/pubs/goodstuff is about recycling in general.
2. Another general site is http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/recycle.htm
3. The National Recycling Coalition (http://www.nrc-recycle.org) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement and improvement of recycling, source reduction, composting, and reuse.
4. The Internet Consumer Recycling Guide (http://www.obviously.com/recycle) gives useful tips on all  sorts of recyclables.
5. GrassRoots Recycling Network (http://www.grrn.org) is a network of activists in favor of “zero waste.” They are challenging both corporations and government.
6. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance has a Waste to Wealth Program (http://www.ilsr.org/recycling) and also publishes an annual report entitled Wasting and Recycling in the United States.
7. Gygnus Group (www.cygnus-group.com) is a consulting company that works with businesses and other organizations to prevent waste in products and packaging.
8. At the EPA Office of Solid Waste (http://www.epa.gov/osw, you will find a great deal of detailed information about trash and links to the office responsible for waste in CT.
9. ExcessAccess.com and Throwplace.com are two companies matching donations with the wish-lists of non-profits. They work in slightly different ways: for instance, ExcessAccess.com provides pick-ups.
10. Goodwill (www.goodwill.org) and The Salvation Army (www.salvationarmyusa.org) take donations to sell at their many local stores. Several of them are in Milford. See local yellow pages for phone numbers and addresses. At Goodwill, 85% of the profits fund job training and other career services. At The Salvation Army, 100% of the profits fund the Salvation Army’s substance abuse rehab centers.

Acetylene Fuel Tanks: There’s a market for these. See under “Welding” in the Yellow Pages, or go to the supplier you got it from. The tank may have an identifier on it.

Aluminum: See Public Works website or “Hot Air” article for Blue Bin material. Aluminum foil goes in the regular trash. Recycling just one aluminum can saves enough energy to operate a TV for 3 hours. Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months.

Batteries: The main types of batteries are button cell batteries (such as those used in watches, cameras, hearing aids, and other small appliances); dry-cell batteries (such as typical flashlight batteries); lead-acid batteries (such as those used in vehicles); and rechargeable batteries (such as those in cellphones, cordless power tools, or remote-control toys). Most batteries of any type contain toxic chemicals, such as lead and mercury. Even a few small button batteries, for instance, can contain enough mercury to pollute a large lake.

• Button-cell batteries can be taken to HazWaste. Retailers that sell them sometimes accept them back for recycling. Also, many button batteries are available in mercury-free designs, so check before you buy.
• Dry-cell batteries can be thrown in the regular trash.
• Lead-acid batteries should be taken to a car dealer or a garage.
• Rechargeable batteries can be taken to HazWaste. If you go to www.rbrc.org (Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation) and put in your zip code you’ll find a long list of nearby retailers that collect rechargeables.

[Blue-Bin Items]: See Public Works website or “Hot Air” article on another part of this ECC website.

Books: Call the Literacy Center, 16 Dixon St. in Woodmont (878-4800). They accept books and sell them at the Oyster Festival to support the Center.

Building Materials: Some of these can be put out for Bulk Pick-up in Milford (see notes above), and some can be taken to HazWaste (see “Hot Air” article). But a large volume of building material is generally much less expensive to recycle than to dispose of. According to the Institute of Local Self-Reliance, reuse operations create 8.7 jobs for every 1000 tons of materials handled. This is 9 times more jobs than traditional recycling facilities and 38 times more jobs than landfills and incinerators.

About 10 companies in the US provide environmentally responsible demolition. According to one spokesman in Portland, OR, a trained crew can recover 85% of a single-family house, with only asbestos and certain plastics and plasters impossible to recycle. In CT, the non-profit Reconnstruction Center, located in West Hartford, accepts donations of building materials and sells them for reuse. Their website is www.reconnstructioncenter.org; call (860) 965-1746; or e-mail info@reconnstructioncenter.org. Urban Miners (www.urbanminers.com) in Wallingford is a business that deconstructs buildings and sells off the pieces; you might be able to negotiate with them, as opposed to donating. The Bridgeport Habitat for Humanity (www.bridgeporthabitat.org) accepts donations of building materials at their Restore program, 1785 Stratford Ave., in Stratford (203-383-4358). They also pick up.

Bulk Mail: Take to Transfer Station and put in labeled disposal bin. According to one enviro group, the percentage of bulk mail that is thrown away unopened is 44%, while less than half of that is recycled. Also see “Paper” below.

Cardboard: Take corrugated cardboard to Transfer Station and put in labeled disposal bin. Some towns recycle other grades of cardboard, such as cereal boxes, containers for drugs, etc., but Milford so far does not. Also see “Paper” below.

*Cellphones: Take them back to where you bought them. Most cellphone stores (e.g. Sprint) have special programs to resell used cellphones on behalf of worthy causes. Motorola (http://promo.motorola.com/recycle/phones/whyrecycle.html) has a prepaid mailer that can contain a mobile phone from any manufacturer. See also “E-Waste” below.

*Computer Disks: see “E-Waste” below.

*Computers:  Computer-related waste is growing as much as three times as fast as any other kind of waste. According to some estimates, people in the US replace about 133,000 computers per day. Fifty-eighty percent of them are shipped to China, where workers disassemble them at great danger to their health from toxic chemicals. To deal with this problem, the online auction company E-Bay has joined a consortium of computer manufacturers encouraging consumers to sell their used computers. E-Bay’s program is called the Rethink Initiative, www.ebay.com/rethink. It will tell people how to sell or donate computers that still work, and recycle those that don’t. (Even under “regular” conditions, more than 20,000 computer items are sold through E-Bay daily.) You can also deal with some manufacturers directly: e.g. Dell (www.dellexchange.com), Hewlett-Packard (www.hp.com/recycle), IBM. (HP and IBM will recycle any personal computer for a fee of $13 to $34.) A website devoted to recycling computers is www.worldwatch.org/ct/20040810/pubs/goodstuff/computers. The National Cristina Foundation, based in Greenwich (http://www.cristina.org/dsf/), has a website where you can donate computers to people who are physically and economically disadvantaged. Two organizations that accept computer donations and distribute them to worthy children are www.c4k.org (in CT) and www.computers4kids.net (in VA). A global version of this is www.worldcomputerexchange.org. Share The Technology (www.sharetechnology.org) simply offers a free service for posting computer donations online. Also see “E-Waste” below.

Diapers: “Disposable” diapers can be thrown away, but they don’t degrade: they last 500 years. In CT, they can’t be called recyclable, but in some areas of California and in the Netherlands they can be. A New York company called Knowaste specializes in the recycling of absorbent hygiene products: it processes them into consumer items such as shoe insoles, roof shingles, and wallpaper. Considering that diapers make up a huge part of the waste stream, right up there with office paper, any effort to recycle them is worthwhile. Lest you think that a declining birth rate will solve this problem effortlessly, consider that in Europe the bulk of absorbent hygiene products comes from nursing homes.

*E-Waste: E-Waste is especially important to dispose of properly or recycle because of the toxic chemicals and dangerous metals involved. Lead, mercury, and beryllium, for instance, are neurotoxics and carcinogens, and can build up in the environment, given that electronics constitute the fastest-growing segment of the solid waste stream. Two million tons of e-gadgets are thrown away each year, including 50 million computers and 130 million cellphones.

The EPA lists state and regional laws and initiatives at http://www.epa.gov/epr/products/estate/html#state. In CT, the directors for the Bristol Resources Recovery Facility want state legislation to create a statewide e-waste program. A $5 charge on each electronic device sold in CT would pay for this program. Another solution is to have the electronics industry pay the charge: that’s what most of Europe does. Maine has followed Europe’s lead, while California has a new law charging computer and TV retailers to charge a disposal fee of $6-$10 to pay for recycling these products. Some manufacturers are pro-active about recycling: for instance, Hewlett-Packard makes scanners with a blend of new plastic and recycled soda bottles, while IBM collected, repaired, and resold about 70,000 tons of electronic equipment during ’03. Motorola, Verizon, Gateway, Panasonic, Canon (www.usa.canon.com), Epson (www.epson.com/recycle), and ATT Wireless are other companies that collect all kinds of e-waste, from cameras to cartridges.

Many e-waste recyclers will only take used material in bulk, but you can occasionally find places that will take individual items. See www.eiae.org (Electronics Industries Alliance Environment Consumer Education Initiative) for lists of local and national organizations that collect your used electronics and give them to worthy causes. Recyclers for broken or antique equipment are also listed. The National Safety Council lists electronic equipment recyclers by state: http://www.nsc.org/ehc/epr2/recycler.HTM. Some of these charge fees.

Fire Extinguishers: HazWaste will not take fire extinguishers at all. Neither will the Milford Fire Dept., even though HazWaste will tell you the Milford Fire Dept. does (and some fire departments in the state may). On the other hand, the Milford Fire Dept. will tell you that HazWaste takes fire extinguishers, although they don’t. Also, the Milford Health Dept. won’t take fire extinguishers. Head spinning? Go to the Stuart L. White Co., which mainly recharges fire extinguishers, and pay them $5 to dispose of a small fire extinguisher. White is located @ 543 Boston Post Rd. in Milford, and their number is 203-878-6311. If you have a larger fire extinguisher, it might have a toll-free number on it that you can call to get disposal information.

Furniture: Put it in Bulk Pickup, or take to Goodwill, Salvation Army.

Grass Clippings and Yard Waste: It’s actually illegal to take clippings and yard waste to the Transfer Station, although small amounts are usually overlooked. The preferred method of disposal for grass clippings is to leave them on the lawn as nutrients. For other yard waste, composting is recommended. Yard waste is by far the largest component of the US waste stream, although it’s declining, as residential patterns change.

*Inkjet Printer Cartridges: If you buy a recycled cartridge from an office supply store, such as Staples, they will often include an envelope to return the cartridge for further recycling. But various community organizations also collect used cartridges for worthy causes. For instance, you can take them to the Café Atlantique on River St., and put them in a basket by the entrance, where a student group from Laurelton Hall picks them up and sends them to a recycler to gain a small fee, which funds the group’s expenses.

Magazines: Take to Transfer Station and put in labeled disposal bin. Also see “Paper” below.

Mercury: AERC (http://www.aercmti.com/home/) specializes in recycling for health-care companies, and especially deals with mercury from instruments, lighting, and other medical equipment.

Oxygen Tanks: There’s a market for these. Look under “Medical Supplies” in the Yellow Pages, or go to the supplier you got it from. Tank may have an identifier on it.

Paper: Newspaper can be put in your blue bin: see “Hot Air” article. Take your waste paper, whether in the form of bulk mail, magazines, flyers, used computer paper, or whatever, to the Transfer Station and put it in the labeled disposal bin. Paper is one of the top 3 contributors to the US waste stream. Much of it is office paper, and some offices have recycling programs, which do make a dent in the problem.

*PDAs: See E-Waste (above).

Pet Waste: Pets’ biowastes don’t recycle naturally into fertilizer, at least in most suburban or urban environments. Instead, they wash off during the next rain into rivers and streams and pollute the water. Studies estimate that pet waste contributes to 30% of the bacterial pollution of some waterways: that’s enough to cause beach closures and make people sick. So you need to clean up after your pets and dispose of their wastes properly. That begs the question of what you do with litter-box material. The familiar clay in litter boxes isn’t biodegradable. Instead, try the flushable alternatives that are available at pet stores. They’re made out of recycled products, such as wheat-based materials and recycled newspaper.

Plastic Bags: Take them to disposal bins at grocery stores (usually near the bottle/can recycling machines) or save them at home and use them for all sorts of household purposes. Plastic bags are a problem all over the US and the world, since they persist on our planet for up to 1000 years. Four out of five grocery bags in the US are now plastic. In Australia, an estimated 65 million plastic bags end up littering the landscape. Certain countries are better at recycling them than others. In South Africa, scavengers collect them and make them into baskets, hats, and other consumer items for sale. Ireland took another approach: it put a 15-cent tax on plastic bags, and their use dropped by 90%. Just the habits of diehards, however, yielded $3 million, and this will go to protecting Ireland’s environment. The UK is planning a similar tax. During January, ’05, San Francisco voted in a 17-cent fee for every grocery bag, paper or plastic. This is the first such fee in the US. In terms of technology fixes, a great many ideas are being tried to manufacture plastic bags from biodegradable plastics (called “bioplastics”) usually based on corn.

Propane Tanks: HazWaste takes small used propane tanks, but not big ones. The Milford Fire Dept. usually has one day a year when it takes used propane tanks of any size. Some garden centers also take them, for a fee.

Solvents: Take any cleaning or construction solvents to HazWaste. If you pour them down the drain, they can corrode pipes, kill off “good” bacteria at water-treatment plants, and cause general pollution and harm to aquatic life when they emerge into the water.