Saturday is “America Recycles Day”… a day that ‘encourages more people to join the movement toward creating a better natural environment by recycling and buying recycled products’ and ‘promotes the social, environmental and economic benefits of recycling.’

A very worthwhile cause, I’d say!

As the Recycling/Environmental Programs Chair at our daughter’s school I’m promoting this great day by encouraging the kids to submit their best recycling tips and the favorite ways their families recycle.   I’m going to compile all of their great ideas and turn it into a recycling newsletter that will be sent home to each family.  Some will even win cool prizes, like a recycled pencil bag from Terracycle! The response has been overwhelming!  It’s so exciting to see their enthusiasm.  Kids rule!

So, to get back to the basics of this day… let’s remember WHY we recycle:

• to reduce pollution
• to save energy
• to help the environment
• to save natural resources
• to keep trash out of landfills

And here are some things to think about …

1. PLASTIC– it can take 20 years for a plastic bag to biodegrade and 250 years for a plastic cup!  And if every American household recycled just one of every 10 plastic bottles, it would keep 200 million pounds of plastic out of landfills each year!
2. PAPER – it accounts for HALF of what is sent to landfills… and it’s recyclable! Plus, recycling one ton of paper would save enough energy to power an average American home for five months!
3. ALUMINUM – recycling just one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a computer for 3 hours.  Last year cans that were NOT recycled and went to landfills were valued at $600 million! (let me go get my shovel and start digging!)
4. GLASS – a bottle in a landfill would take more than 4000 years to decompose, but glass never “wears out” and can be recycled forever!

Sadly, 75% of “trash” is recyclable, but only 25% actually gets recycled.

So get recycling, increase your recycling, start someone you know recycling… just get to it!… because “America Recycles” and that’s a club all of us should want to belong to!