Save the date (and your
recyclables). Kiwanis is
again providing Electronics and
Scrap Metal Recycling along with
Document Shredding. Clean
out your house, garage and filing
cabinets of unwanted items and
responsibly recycle
them. Anything
Electronic, anything Metal and any
personal
Documents. Bicycles will
be repurposed. This (and Leave
& Take below) are
community events free to all
with no residency requirement,
provided by the Kiwanis Club of West
Geauga. Anyone interested in
volunteering to help either event,
joining Kiwanis or need more
details, please contact Ken Mantey
440-729-2869 or visitwgkiwanis.org.
This is an example of
alternative recycling used at other
successful recycling
communities. Instead of
leaving that lawn chair or little
tykes house by the dumpsters at the
Recycle Park hoping it will find a
good home – save them and bring them
to the Leave & Take Event.
Whether we’re decluttering or
down-sizing, we all have good things
we don’t want to just throw
away. Students getting their 1stplace,
young families just starting to grow
would love some of the stuff we have
too much of. The most
efficient R in recycling is
Re-Use. Try it.
WG Kiwanis together
with the Chesterland Recycling
Committee built the Recycle Park in
2015 on Rt 306 with $29K funding by
the Township Trustees.The
previous locationof
the recycling bins by the town hall
was a serious safety concern as they
were in the path of the fire,
emergency and service vehicles. As
avid recyclers we all had
experiences where we paid for
curbside recycling only to see the
waste haulers use the same truck to
haul both garbage and recyclables,
or have heard or seen other evidence
that recycling was not really taking
place. We wanted to see recycling in
our community to be done responsibly
and
right – following the lead of
the progressives on the East and West
coasts.
We mid-westerners could successfully
clean, sort and recycle as the best
ofthem.
The
Recycle
Park is a Not Dump
However, it is a learning
curve. We all need to learn what IS
and what IS NOT recyclable. The
single stream bins at the Recycle
Park allow co-mingling of different
recyclables. But just throwing
something into the bins does not
make it recyclable. They are also
not WISH bins as “I wish this to be
recyclable”.
You must read the
signs on the bins to see what IS
acceptable: Rinsed clean bottles,
cans, foil and steel trays and
plastic containers – but only
plastic containers that carry the
numbers 1-7 stamped on them with the
recycle icon. If NO recycle icon, or
it does not include the numbers 1-7,
the plastic item IS NOT recyclable
at this time, do not throw in the
bins. Take it home with you and
throw it out in your garbage can.
Do
NOT leave items outside the bins.
That is equivalent to and fineable
as littering.
Collect your
recyclables in any container you
wish, but empty the contents and
take that container back with you.
Plastic Bags are contaminants that
jam the recycling equipment, cause
costly downtime and reduces the
value of what is trying to be
recycled.Plastic
bags can and are
successfully
recycled (e.g. TREX composite
decking) separately at the
collection bin outside of GiantEagle.
Kiwanis Club of WG Yearly
Shredding & Recycling Events
Every year since 2007
(except 2015 when we were building
the Recycle Park) Kiwanis Club of WG
has provided yearly events to bridge
the gap in what can be successfully
recycled in our community. Our
drives now collect:
-Document Shredding
of
identity
sensitive content (which then isrecycled)
-Electronics (useable
items are refurbished and donated to
local schools and non-profits).
-Scrap Metal (which
is mined for value metals and pays
for theevent)
-Bicycles (partners
with Ohio City Bicycle Co-Op to
provide youth through the “Earn A
Bike” program” and awarded to
refugees with needed dependable and inexpensive
transportation.
Gold Mining
If done correctly,
there is money in recycling. WG
Kiwanis has been paying for this
community event by mining the value
metals that can be found in the
scrap metal brought in for
housecleaning.The
first step is to separate ferrous
(magnetic) metals from non-ferrous
(non-magnetic) metals. The
non-ferrous metals such as aluminum,
copper, brass, and lead command
higher scrap metal prices than the
ferrous metals (steel & iron). The
better the metals can be separated and clean
of dissimilar metals or other
materials such as plastic and wood,
they command higher “clean”
cents/pound vs lower “dirty”
cents/pound.It is a labor intensive
process but our event volunteers
identify metals that can be
harvested from appliances and
discarded items by disassembling
them. The Boy Scouts have been very
successful and adept
in these skills. If you would like
to try your own hand at “mining”
(children 8thgrade
or older only with parent
supervision) or joining the Kiwanis,
please contactus
Electronic
waste, commonly
referred to as e-waste,
is one of
the fastest growing segments in the
municipal solid waste stream.
Although nearly 100 percent of
e-waste is recyclable, the current
recycling rate of e-waste is not
promising at 12.5percent..
What is so bad about E
waste?
When
electronics end up in landfills,
toxins leach into the soil and
water. E-Waste affects nearly every
system in the human body because
they contain a plethora of toxic
components including Mercury, Lead,
Cadmium, Polybrominated Flame
Retardants, BariumandLithium.The irony is that these
special metals are in limited supply
as natural resources, and would
represent a huge cost savings to
reclaim them ratherthan
the expense and energy of mining,
extracting and smelting them down
from raw materials.
How much e waste is
thrown away each year?
20 to 50 million
metric tons of e-waste are disposed
worldwide every year. Cell phones
and other electronic items contain
high amounts of precious metals like
gold or silver. Americans dump
phones containing over $60
million in gold/silver every
year.
What should we do
with our old electronics?
1.Don't
trash them - we should never throw
e-waste in thetrash!
2.Pass
them on for reuse....
3.Recycle them (Kiwanis
event)....
4.Find
a good e-waste recycler(RET3).
5.Best
Buystores
6.Geauga Trumbull Solid
Waste District Household HazardousWaste
drives
7.Do
a cell phone recycling drive and
fundraiser in yourschool.
8.Learn to fix broken
gadgets yourself
Where can I
Recycle…?
Our
aim is to research and select
vendors to provide the best
no-brainer recycling of your
unwanted items.The
following provides some background
on our selection criteria. Feel free
to visit their websites to hear
their stories and what they have tooffer:
Provides staff to
unload your documents out of your
vehicle, placing them in secure
trucks to be taken back to their
facility for environmental offsite
shredding. No burning diesel and
fumes from an idle shredder,
minimizes wait time with far greater
capacity and throughput while
avoiding potential jamming,
breakdown and backlog issues with
on-site shredders.
Electronics Recycling
by RET3 Job Corp
Ret3.org
216-361-9991 1814
East 40th Street Cleveland, OH 44103
-Refurbish,
Reuse,
Recycle – dispose of E-waste in
sustainable andeco-
friendlyway
-One
of the few companies that accepts and responsibly
recycles
oldTV’s
-Recycling
Industry Certified
-Charitable
-
reuses serviceable parts to
refurbish thousands of computers
every year for distribution to
schools and non-profitorganizations.
-Unusable
equipment is subsequently
de-manufactured and the individual
components are separated for reuse,
and
the balance sold as raw
materials to Original Equipment
Manufacturers. This includes glass,
plastics, metals, ink cartridges,
cardboard, circuit boards and other
rawmaterials.
-Trusted
– hard drives and other
physical media is scrubbed or
physically destroyed to ensure your
data is kept safe
-Committed
No Landfill guarantee means all
electronic waste that comes through
our facility will either be reused
or harvested for parts or recycled
and will never see a landfill
-RET3
Job Corp. is a non-profit
organization dedicated to
Refurbishing, Reusing, and Recycling
computer and electronic equipment
while Educating and Training
recipients and the transitional
workforce to repair, upgrade, and
use computers; thus helping to
shrink the digital divide and create
a more productive and
technologically adept workforce in
northeastOhio.
Metal
Recycling by DeMilta Iron & Metal
Demiltairon.com
440-749-0530 3911 Ben Hur Ave,
Willoughby, OH 44094
-Delivers
roll-off bins one day
prior to the event
-Returns
for pickup immediately after the event
to eliminate weekend“losses”
OCBC is a non-profit,
volunteer-driven cooperative bicycle
education center offering riding and
repair classes; refurbished used
bikes for sale or
rent; hands- on learning and shop
credit for volunteering; and public
shop use, advice, and assistance.