Question by aikyoo: Do you have suggestions on recycling activities that a community can undertake?
I am planning to start a recycling campaign, a sustainable one, in our community. Please do give me suggestions on simple yet realistic recycling activities. Your suggestions will surely help. Merci beaucoup!
Best answer:
Answer by Alison G
First of all – GOOD FOR YOU!!! Count me in if you are anywhere near Fishers! I don’t know what scale you are thinking of, but here are some ideas from home level to city wide!
Composting is my favorite recycling project, I’m an avid gardener! – educating people on the benefits of compost, and the simplicity of making it is the ultimate recycling project! You can see the results, and it keeps so much out of landfills.
– saving grass clippings, letting them rot down and spreading them on flower beds etc. Even better – mow with a mulching mower! Garden waste can be saved in anything from a simple pile to a fancy compost bin.
-collecting leaves in fall; on a home level, mow over them and bag them. Spreading the chipped leaves over flower beds creates great mulch, protects your plants, and puts essential nutrients back into the soil. On a community scale, you’d need a large place to compost them, but compost is excellent plant food, and you can sell it cheap to cover costs! (or free if you don’t have costs)
– you can collect tree limbs, trimmings etc and chip them for mulch. Sell bags of mulch back to the community!
– set up a central recycling point. Lots of skips for different recyclables, you can actually cover your own costs in a lot of ways here, aluminum and other metals, and paper/magazines can be sold to recyclers. Include building materials if you really want to get large scale!
– have recycling bins next to regular trash bins around town for cans, plastic and glass bottles. In Germany, their regular trash cans are divided into 4 sections for glass, plastic, metal and trash! It is so cool. This would obviously need town approval, but getting them involved would be awesome!
There are so many ways to approach this, but the most important thing, I think, is to educate the public! In general, most Americans don’t think in terms of recycling, or the environment. Just getting the public to change their thinking is the biggest step to success – and making things easy for them will help too!
I hope this helps! Good Luck.
Give your answer to this question below!
One town I lived in had drop boxes all over for people to deposit cans, bottles, newspapers, … for different charities to turn in for cash. The boxes ran from fancy metal boxes to simple plywood ones. Start out small and build on your successes.
1. Repaint dated Bldgs locally
2. Police streets for trash
3. Clean near homeless areas in city etc.
4. Carry mobile Recycle Bins
5. ID places for recycling by GPS
6. Use Google Maps.
7. Contact City Hall for Help
8. Involve local churches more.
9. Involve Kiawanis group.
10. Dev website for PR
11. Contact civic leaders.
12. contact local schools.
13. Collect Recycleables for 1 month.
14. see City Trash Dept.
15. Raze blighted homes etc.
16. Clean rubbish & get praise from Fire Dept.
17. Contact Habitat for Humanity to rebuild Homes.
18. Clean parkspaces.
19. ID those strong in Green Values
20. Have Picnic BBQ for workers.
OR catered lunch event.
21. make speeches to City Hall.
22. contact local press.
23. Involve local business more.
24. Unite ALL, DONT divide.
25. Hold a RECYCLE IN: people bring recycles to one pre chosen Drop site.
26. Recycle computers or contact firms that DO locally.
Have Fun
& do this Bi annually alone.
You could try a creative art party for neighborhood kids: gather up all and any different “trash” like colorful milk or soda bottle caps, shoeboxes, wood scraps, buttons, fabric, paper, etc. and provide glue and tools for creating something new. This kind of activity is great with kids because they are imaginitive and not so convinced as adults about what is “trash” and what is “treasure”. It really helps change the way you think about what some little thing might be worth.
I help run a recycling center that provides all sorts of materials for art and creative projects. You just need a space and some time. Good luck!
Well, besides the usual glass, paper, plastic, tin/aluminum, you can organize an annual/biannual electronics recycling, a hazardous waste recycling event, collect spent batteries for recycling, or even collect household paint to be reused as well as recycle the can (a local paint store or habitat for humanity type organization might be able to help with that one). Those are the ones that come to my head at the moment. Oh, just thought of something else: There are tons of places that will give you a small mail-able plastic bag to collect toner cartriges and cell phones. Some offer payment to a charity for each one received. Another idea that just came to mind is recycling old tires. My hometown organized an event that collected old tires, hazardous waste, and some electronics.
Good for you and good luck!
(Below are some sites that I got through a quick search on the internet.)
check this out – i just joined http://www.freecycle.org
Yes, a place where we can drop off aluminum cans, i live out in country of pearl river and do not have pick up. also how about a plastic bottle drop off. I saw one of Sundance the other night. We do not have a local area for any kind of recycling. Go for it. If you have the energy to fight govt. for it. Do it, if you need help let me know. I’m ready for some kind of revolution, to protect our earth. Because of Katrina here, their cutting down so many trees for “progress” always makes me sing the song “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot, they put the trees in a tree museum and charged $1.50 just to see them, don’t you how it goes, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” a song from the 70’s that always is relevant.
A group i ran recently recycled garden canes and plastic plant pots to make ladybird houses.
Just cut the canes to length push out the centers and pack into the pot, use some twine to hang them up.