America Recycles Day is Saturday, Nov. 15 and communities across the country will be celebrating this national day of recycling with various recycling activities and projects. America Recycles Day is the only nationally recognized day dedicated to encouraging Americans to recycle and to buy recycled products.
Celebrating its 12th year, America Recycles Day (ARD) has grown to include millions of Americans pledging to increase their recycling habits at home and work and to buy products made with recycled materials.
Keep Fremont Beautiful is an affiliate of Keep America Beautiful and our local mission is to improve everyone’s waste handling practices. One sure way to improve waste handling practices is to encourage our citizens to recycle.
Recycling reduces the amount of waste going to the landfill and that is a waste-handling improvement. Creating new products from recycled materials helps to conserve our valuable resources. For instance, it takes less energy and water to make paper from paper. And recycling one ton of paper actually saves 17 trees.
Several local retailers have agreed to create special ARD displays at their business. The displays will feature products that contain recycled content. These informational displays will help to create greater public awareness regarding products that contain recycled materials and assist the consumer in making the “Buy Recycled” purchasing choice.
During the days leading up to America Recycles Day, Keep Fremont Beautiful will be conducting school presentations, distributing recycling information and encouraging everyone to sign a recycling pledge.
On Monday and Wednesday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day, Keep Fremont Beautiful volunteers will be on hand at our local Hy-Vee Store to hand out recycling information and have you sign a recycling pledge. By signing the recycling pledge, your name will be entered in a prize drawing.
One lucky winner will win a “green gift basket” — loaded with lots of “green” stuff. Local businesses have donated “green” prizes and the basket contains some pretty cool stuff!
Greens Greenhouse donated a “green” plant for the gift basket. Did you know that house plants actually clean the air inside your home? We all could use some clean air so a green plant is a good “green” prize.
Buck’s Shoes donated a pair of Birkenstock Eco Friendly Socks. I have a pair of these socks on my feet right now and they are wonderful. The socks are made from EcoSpun fiber. This special fiber is made from recycled plastic bottles. How cool is that?
Our local Wal-Mart Super Center donated a package of energy saving compact fluorescent light bulbs and a door mat made from recycled tires. I’ve been using the CFLs for a few years now and I really like them. They last so long. (Eventually they will burn out — just remember you can recycle your old CFL at the Keep Fremont Beautiful Office in the City Auditorium — call 727-2808 for more information.) The door mat made from old tires is marvelous. One year I gave everybody in my family one for Christmas.
FirstarFibre donated a $50 gift certificate for their curbside rewards program. It has to be for a new customer so if you win and you are already signed up for curbside recycling you can always re-gift it to someone on your Christmas list! They also donated some reusable shopping bags so you can for sure keep those for yourself. Did you know that 20 years ago, there were nearly 1,000 curbside recycling programs in the United States? Today we have over 10,000 community curbside recycling programs across the nation and now Fremont is one of those communities — hooray!
Harvest Health and Coffee, Staples and Hy-Vee have all agreed to donate a “green” product for the basket. We just don’t know what it is they are donating so that will be a surprise. We’ll keep gathering prizes until Nov. 14. If you would like to donate a “green” product just give us a call at 727-2808.
On Nov. 15 each year, millions of people become better informed about the importance of daily recycling and buying recycled products. We hope you will take the time to educate yourself concerning local recycling efforts and choose to become involved. Call Keep Fremont Beautiful at 727-2808 for more information.
Sue Reyzlik is coordinator of Keep Fremont Beautiful.
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