Results for the first four months of the Think Green Recycling
Challenge have been released.
The Friday North route – which includes Wallingford and part of the Green Lake neighborhood – is in first place, but not by much. Our .98% diversion rate is followed closely by Tuesday North with .71%.
See the latest Recycling Challenge Results. Scroll to the bottom of the linked page to view the most recent diversion rate data and chart. This page also shows the boundaries of the Friday North route.
Wallingford residents are doing a great job sorting household waste into recycling and yard/food waste, but we still have six weeks to go in the contest. We need to get additional weight into our recycling and yard waste containers.
How you can help: Rake up old leaves and needles in your yard, sidewalk, in the street along the curb, and around your nearby storm drains. Your sidewalks will be less slippery and you’ll reduce the amount of vegetation gunk that clogs the drains. (The photo above is from N 46th and Interlake.)
Do winter pruning before the end of March and put the cuttings in yard waste.
Get rid of some of the more unusual items that can be recycled in your curbside cart:
- Scrap metal of all kinds. Maximum size 2′ x 2′ x 2′; minimum size 3″ square. Do not recycle metal with plastic, wood or rubber attached. You can recycle metal items such as bicycle parts but not car parts due to grease contamination. Screws, nails, bolts, and keys are too small to recycle.
- Aluminum and tin cans of all sizes, including old cookie and popcorn tins
- Plastic trays, cups, jars, jugs, tubs, and other containers
- Paperback books or magazines that can’t be donated to charity
- Phone books – then opt out of phone book delivery
The Think Green Recycling Challenge runs from October 3, 2011 through March 31, 2012. The neighborhood(s) in the winning Waste Management route will win $50,000 to spend on improvement projects.
Thanks Barb! This is just the incentive I need to clean up the garden and go through all the file cabinet drawers and boxes of old papers in the basement to purge it into the recycling bin.
Speaking of books… I have a set of 1960-ish Encyclopedia Americana that I’ve been looking around the net to see what I can do with… and the best answer seems to be “recycle them”. (Or possibly “donate them to a school for kids to cut up.”) I’m wondering what I would have to do to be able to put them in the Seattle ‘cycle bins? Rip the (fake?) leatherette covers off?
I’ll take ’em!!!
Hardback books can not be recycled due to the glue in the bindings. You would have to cut out the pages and recycle them separately. Donation and re-use is much better. Thanks, Nancy!
Speaking of recycling books, there is a book drive going on now through March 31 for a nationwide Rotary project, “Books for the World.” I’ll post more info on Wallyhood soon giving details about how you can donate books locally. http://www.rotarybooksfortheworld.org/
Nancy,
If you’re serious, you can contact me at [email protected] (replace those zeros with regular old letter “o”).
Can the biodegradable packing peanuts go into the “clean green” bin? I know that the Styrofoam ones are accepted at the UPS store but they do not accept the biodegradable ones. And, yes, I am the lucky recipient of encyclopedias!
Manufacturers of biodegradable packing peanuts say they can be composted or dissolved in water, but Seattle Public Utilities’ web site advises that they go in the garbage. Can’t figure out why. I’ll check with Cedar Grove and see what they say. One bio-peanut maker suggests they be thrown at weddings.
Here’s the scoop on biodegradable packing peanuts from Cedar Grove: Just because the peanuts are called BIODEGRADABLE, that does not mean they are COMPOSTABLE, which is also true for many food service items (cups, plates, bowls, cutlery). If the item hasn’t been tested and approved as compostable by Cedar Grove, it can not go in your food/yard waste container.
So – as of today, NO biodegradable packing peanuts have passed the Cedar Grove compostability test, so they must go into the garbage. Better yet, reuse them.
The experiment: putting them in the rain barrel to see if they dissolve.
And I want to thank Rob C for a splendid set of encyclopedias from which a table is getting crafted upon which the T volume will rest. That said, now the Jiminy Cricket e-n-c-y-c-l-o-p-e-d-i-a song from Disney’s Pinocchio is stuck in my head.
But thanks, Barb.
And how great was it to score a Living Social Reed Painting deal. The Reed people have wonderful customer service.
So thanks Wallyhood x3.
Nancy, please bury a few patio stones in your clean green to offset the weight of those encyclopedias we lost…. 🙂
I usually get rid of the biodegradable packing peanuts by putting ’em in my laundry tub and spraying them with water. Not their “highest and best use”, I’m sure, but the do go away. So I’m sure they’ll dissolve in a rain barrel, but I think it’ll make a mucky glop, and I wonder what kind of microcritters might want to grow in that?
/r
If anyone wants more weight in their yard waste before March 31, let me know. I have many sources for heavy wood and decomposing leaves.