Relight your tree: incandescent bulbs on their way out

Goodbye inefficient incandescent Christmas light bulbs, hello CFLs.

That's what Congress said when they passed a law outlawing the sale of plain ol' light bulbs - at least the inefficient kind - as of 2012.

Says the New York Times:

And so far, consumers have been slow to give new products a chance. Compact fluorescents, for example, are already ubiquitous in stores. Many retailers, led by Wal-Mart, have promoted the economics of the bulbs — though compact fluorescents generally cost six times what incandescents do, they last six times as long and use far less energy.

The change was inevitable, given that your everyday lightbulb casts off most of its energy in the form of heat, not light. Compact fluorescents still contain mercury, however, and need to be handled with care. Recycling Jackson is working on an easy way for Jackson resident to dispose of their CFLs.

The future? LEDs, says the article, but right now they're just too expensive for casual use.

Exciting news in plastics.

Northwest Refuse sent us some exciting news, via our former president Travis Fojtasek. They are now accepting dry cleaner bags, bubble wrap, and black plastic garden and nursery pots.

Hurray!

Travis also told us that, when you recyle plastic bottles, you can keep the screw-top lid on. Northwest will accept those from now on, too.

The list of acceptable plastics keeps growing!

2008 site open dates.

It's official: we're open in 2008.

Half-time, that is.

Below, you'll find our Monroe St. drop-off site open dates. You can drop off your materials from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

• January 5, 19


• February 2, 16


• March 1, 15


• April 5, 19


• May 3, 17


• June 7, 21


• July 5, 19


• August 2, 16


• September 6, 20


• October 4, 18


• November 1, 15


• December 6, 20

Be sure to register as a member of Recycling Jackson to do all your recycling at our site for free.

We're hiring: education and outreach coordinator

How would you like to work for Recycling Jackson?

We're seeking an education and outreach coordinator. It's a part-time position to implement and maintain a multi-age outreach and educational program on solid waste management. Nobody but organized, independent, flexible self-starters should apply. And we'd love to have someone with teaching/classroom experience.

Please send your cover letter, references and resume by December 19 to recyclingjackson[at]yahoo.com, or to:

Recycling Jackson
PO Box 426
Jackson, MI 49204

And since I hated in when companies didn't give me a name to address my cover letter to, you can send yours attn: President Steve Noble.

He likes it when you call him "President Steve."

HolidayLEDs.com offers light bulb recycling.

HolidayLEDs.com, a local retailer for LED Christmas lights, is accepting incandescent Christmas lights for recycling.

Says HolidayLEDs.com:

All lights submitted for recycling must be mailed to HolidayLEDs.com, postage paid, and post-marked no later than December 20, 2007...The first 100 participants (which shall be determined by the date the packaged is post-marked) will receive one free set of LED Christmas lights. The second 100 participants (which shall be determined by the date the packaged is post-marked) will receive a 10% coupon for any purchase at HolidayLEDs.com.

When you send your lights, you have to include your name, mailing address, phone number and e-mail address.

Send your lights to:

HolidayLEDs.com

Attn: Recycling Program

120 W. Michigan Ave., Suite 1403

Jackson, MI 49201

If you don't have any lights to recycle, you can also participate in the Ugliest Christmas Lights Contest.

Apple e-mails a how-to.

Over at Hack This Mac, the writer bought a new Mac Mini and had Apple e-mail him/her this:



Nice Apple - love the headline. Apple also includes shipping barcodes, but the author suggests in-store e-cycling, which is a darned fine idea.

Wired: e-waste is scourge of the earth.

Tony Long, the Luddite, has a great column on e-waste over at Wired.com:

According to the Associated Press, upwards of 500 million tons of electronic trash is generated worldwide every year, and the lion's share of it comes from here. Most of it winds up in U.S. landfills, a cheery thought. What's left is sent overseas to Third World chop shops, where what can be salvaged and resold is. The rest is dumped, and without much care.

Burying old computer components and television monitors in landfills, or dumping them in a Malaysian ditch, is a particularly malignant form of pollution, given the high levels of toxins present in these electronics. On top of that, the workers who deconstruct all this wonderful innovation in Vietnam or India or, especially, China aren’t protected by OSHA regulations. Using crude tools and sometimes no tools, they are expected to extract what can be recycled, leaving them exposed to poisoning and sickness and, who knows, maybe death.

...Some of you may be untroubled by this. If so, shame on you. Your planet is slowly dying from carbon dioxide emissions and the casual dumping of toxic waste. Turning a blind eye to this fact while eagerly consuming every glittery new tech bauble dangled before you is not only pathetic, but suicidal.

Long goes on to say that if tech innovators really think they're cool, they should invent an easy way to recycle e-waste.

When Black Friday comes.

Looking for a green way to shop? Try Cooler, a site that calculates the environmental impact of your holiday shopping. Divine Caroline also has 13 ways to grab green gifts this holiday season.

Caroline suggests memberships to national parks, rugged plastic water bottles, bikes, and books:

Knowledge is power, and these books could revolutionize the way a friend thinks about mundane things like food, driving, and this little place called earth.

Shopping for a green (as in inexperienced) greenie? Try the Go Green gift bag starter, the perfect gift to brainswash your waste-happy friends and family.

And don't forget to recycle all those shopping bags and cardboard boxes.


by Dave Lawrence

Reuse is the best "R"

So says the folks over at Low End Mac.

And it could be true. If items are reused indefinitely, then there's no need for trashing or recycling. They stay out of the waste stream forever.

I'm an Apple Mac geek. I love Macintosh computers, new and old, and currently own and maintain an iBook G4, an original iMac G3 Bondi Blue, an original clamshell iBook G3, and two Mac SE/30s, as well as a Newton MessagePad 110 and video iPod. Thanks to Recycling Jackson, I was also able to restore a strawberry iMac G3 for a friend.

The author of the Low End Mac column, owner and operator of eRecycler Online, noted

We are a growing recycling company in Texas and believe firmly in reuse. Towards that end we run over 100,000 online auctions a year; the proceeds help support the more expensive aspects of responsible recycling.

That's something we've found at our e-waste drives: people turn in perfectly useable computer equipment. "Sometimes things die and can't be fixed, but I'd rather see an old usable Mac given a new home than stripped for recycling," says Dan over at Low End Mac. Thankfully eBay is full of old Mac and PC stuff, and there are ways you can save old electronics like iPods.

Recycling Jackson will gladly take your e-waste. But if there's a chance your computer is still good, give it to someone who needs it, or to someone who can't afford a new computer on their own.

In our use-and-throw-away culture, good things can be said about people who don't automatically hit the "delete" key on their e-waste.


by Dave Lawrence, RJ vice president

How to prepare materials for recycling

Here are some guidelines to keep in mind when you bring your recycling materials to our Recycling Jackson drive-up site at 1401 N. Brown St. (see map above).


NEWSPAPER: Loose or in paper bags.

MIXED PAPER, MAGAZINES & PHONE BOOKS: Junk mail, office paper, school papers, file folders, boxboard, etc. Loose or in paper bags.

CORRUGATED CARDBOARD: Break down and flatten boxes.

GLASS: Clear, brown and green glass. Rinse, remove caps and rings. No Pyrex, window glass, drinking glasses, dishes or lightbulbs.

METAL: Metal cans, rinsed and flattened. Other iron and steel.

ALUMINUM: Aluminum cans, pans, clean foil, lawn chairs, eaves, doors, etc. Remove screws and strapping from aluminum.

PLASTICS: All plastics No. 1-7 with recycling symbol, such as milk jugs, water and juice bottles, detergent/bleach containers, margarine tubs, cottage cheese/yogurt containers. Only lids with recycling symbol.

Items not accepted:
Plastic silverware, plates, cups, toys, flowerpots, automotive containers, hazardous-material containers, soda can rings, sandwich/bread bags.

America Recycles Day

Happy America Recycles Day. This is actually the tenth year.

I think it's one of those days that people just like to put on a calendar, like Middle Name Pride Day, or National Pecan Day.

Interesting, according to BetterWorld.net:

Until 'modern times' recycling was the normal way of life. During World War II for example, when the nation needed to conserve resources at home, 25% of all wastes were recycled. But by 1960 less than 8% of our wastes were recycled. Today, 32% of wastes are recycled in America and there are more than 10,000 curbside recycling programs in America!

The National Recycling Coalition has a cool site to celebrate, including a recycling impact calculator.

How to recycle paper.

You've got a paper bag full of paper ready for recycling. You arrive at one of the drop-off sites, and see two different bins marked "newsprint/paper" and "mixed paper." Then there's one with "cardboard" on it.

What to do?

Here's a quick run-down:

Newsprint and newspaper

This one is pretty easy. Newspaper and newspaper-like newsletters get tossed into this bin, as does phone book paper. This is newsprint, according to Central Management Services:

Newsprint is an uncoated, ground wood paper made by grinding wood into pulp without removing certain components, including lignin. (Lignin remaining in the ground wood paper fiber is what causes newsprint to turn yellow and deteriorate over time.)

Easy, right? Newsprint is probably the top type of paper that's recycled, thanks to newspaper subscriptions.

Mixed paper

This is where things get tricky. Cereal boxes? Mixed paper. Copy machine and printer paper? Mixed paper. Magazines? Mixed paper. Basically, anything that's not newsprint gets thrown into these bins. The kicker is stuff that looks like cardboard - like cereal boxes or six-pack boxes - but isn't really cardboard. Basically, if you can rip it and it doesn't have the corrugation stuff between paper sheets, it's mixed paper.

Corrugated cardboard

Storage boxes, shipping boxes - anything that's corrugated (has the ripples of cardboard in between sheets for strength) counts. One clue is to look at what's already in the bin. If you see a bunch of copy paper boxes, you're good to go. What I like to do is carry my recycling paper IN a cardboard box, dump the paper in the "mixed" bin, and then dump the cardboard box in the "corrugated" bin.

It's not a huge deal if you mix up your paper in the bins, but pre-sorting makes things easier for the hauler - and the less they have to work, the more profitable recycling becomes.

And we all want that.

IKEA takes CFLs.

Recycling Jackson has heard a few questions regarding compact flourescents - they do contain mercury, and aren't always easy to dispose of.

Then along came IKEA.

The Consumerist reports that the uber-furniture retailer is taking CFLs at all its giant locations.

Check out IKEA's website for details.

Here's IKEA's take on it:

Bring your used mercury containing lightbulbs to the IKEA store for free disposal. Since our CFL bulbs contain a small amount of mercury, they should not be simply tossed out. IKEA offers the perfect solution: a ‘Free Take Back’ program offering recycle bins in all IKEA stores.

So if you plan to shop for Swedish kitchen tables at Michigan's IKEA location, near Canton (and beware - the parking lot is nuts), be sure to take along your expired CFLs.

Save on energy bills with class.

[From the Jackson Citizen Patriot]

Interested in getting a $100 credit toward your energy bill?

Community Action Agency is offering the credit to eligible candidates who participate in an energy-reduction class.

Classes are offered on several dates throughout October, November and December.

For more information or to register for a class, contact Community Action Agency at 784-4800, ext. 250. Classes will take place at 1214 Greenwood Ave. in Jackson.

Starve the incinerator.

In reference to the article on October 24, 2007 (“Trash Flow at Troubled Incinerator Increases"), why don’t the residents in Jackson County do their best to put the incinerator out of business?

A quote from the article stated “the amount of trash being diverted to the landfill also has increased, but (Steve) Shotwell said that is because trash flow overall has increased.” This is good news?

I find it disheartening that trash flow has increased. When will the residents of Jackson County understand that the trash hauling fees they pay are directly tied to the $91.41 per-ton tipping fee? By reducing the amount of material they put on the curb each week as trash, they can save themselves money, as well as reduce the overall trash flow.

A lot of the material that is put out as trash can be disposed of in many of the areas recycling collection points. This will reduce the trash flow to the incinerator, which in turn could eventually lead to a decreased need for the incinerator itself.

At a recent electronic waste collection event coordinated by Recycling Jackson, over 24,000 pounds (12 tons) of “e-waste” was collected. This was a six hour event, and if that material was disposed of as “trash” and taken to the incinerator, the cost would have been just over $1,000 in tipping fees. By collecting this material during the event, the burning or burying of this material in the McGill Landfill was prevented.

Recycling can be an emotional issue of “saving the environment”, but for those that are looking for ways to reduce expenses at home, simply removing the recyclable material from their trash can save them money. Businesses that remove recyclable material from their trash can realize savings up to 50% on their trash hauling costs.

It is time for Jackson County residents to make it a goal to reduce the dependence on the incinerator, and force the local government to find a different way to generate income from trash; 6,563 tons of trash generated nearly $600,000 in tipping fees in September.

If the county became more proactive on recycling, couldn’t we have generated income from an aggressive recycling program, and reduce that 6,563 tons of trash being burned or buried in September?

I think so.


[by David Milis, written as a letter to the editor to the Jackson Citizen Patriot.]

Easy ways to recycle at work.

Maybe you're a big recycler at home - but what about at work?

Many workplaces have instituted company-wide recycling program (Recycling Jackson's own George Gansos has done a tremendous job at Foote Health Systems), but some are still stuck in the pre-green era. What to do?

Do like I did: make it personal. Here are some quick tips to do your own recycling at your workplace.

Invest in recycling bins
Bins can be as sturdy as the plastic trash-like bins, or a plain old cardboard box - the key is to put them in places where people will use them. I've found next to the copy machine and printer works well, as well as our receptionist desk. If someone makes a mistake, the tendency is to toss the scrap paper in the trash. If you put a recycling reminder in front of them, it will better your chances of collecting the paper.

Paper, not plastic
I figured that gathering my loads in paper grocery bags would work best; that way, I could toss the whole thing in the mixed paper bin at the drop-off sites. So I sent out an all-staff e-mail asking for spare bags, and my co-workers came through in spades. Now I line the recycling bins with the paper bags, snatch them when they're full, and dump the whole load at the drop-off site.

Remind, remind, remind
Catch someone tossing their printed e-mail (can you say, "Grrr!") in the trash? Remind them of the conveniently-placed bins you have stationed next to the printer. Send out e-mail telling staff when you'll be collecting the paper each week. Post flyers (on recycled or already-used paper!) next to the copier or in the breakroom with recycling tips and information on drop-off sites in town. If you have a company newsletter, post a little article in their about your company's new efforts. Do away with disposable plates and cups, and have staff bring in their own from home.

DIY
Sometimes it takes a champion to do the right thing: if your place of employment isn't as passionate about recycling as you are, take the initiative and do everything yourself. It made take you a few extra minutes a week to gather your recycling and drop it off (say, on the way home - or on your lunch break), but your example may inspire others. I was the only recycler in my office, but the idea caught on and now I have a co-recycler who actually drops everything off for me.

Of course you'll always have the employee who dumps their Styrofoam coffee cup into the paper bin when they walk by, or the people who bypass the bin all-together and continue to toss their paper in the trash. It's no biggie. Just remember any little bit you do helps.

I've found that, over time, the amount of paper we're recycling has to make a difference somewhere, somehow. Even if it's a mindfulness trick - keeping recycling in people's brains - it's worth the effort.

Maybe someday I'll institute a system for plastic bottles. But for now, my little recycling program works just fine. And so can yours with just a little bit of effort.

This blog doesn't come from trees.

But paper towels do.



Hence the idea behind the These Come from Trees movement - an effort to save on paper towel usage.

You can buy a set of stickers that goes to help the Sierra Club, and TCFT have found the stickers - which are a kind of culture jam - reduce towel usage by about 15%.

No trees were harmed in the writing of this post.

Number of the day.

24,725

Pounds of wasted collected at this past weekend's e-waste drive.

That's more than 12 tons of electronic waste that didn't get incinerated, buried, or shipped off to some other continent.

Thanks again, Jackson, for helping us out.

Saving, by the numbers.

I started doing things different when I found out it would save me money.

I switched my home over to CFL bulbs when I learned it would save me on my power bill, and I haven’t changed a bulb in the last three years. Looking back, that was my first venture in to a “sustainable” way of life, and it was 100% motivated by saving money at home.

I work with this guy that has practiced sustainability for longer than I have been alive. He got to know me, and he learned I was a “numbers” guy. “Show me the numbers, show me how the numbers are good or bad, and then we can make some decisions.” That’s me. He showed me numbers at work. He showed me bad numbers at work. Time to make some decisions…at work.

I work for this company. This company is big, and sells a lot of stuff. I mean this company is real big, and sells more stuff than any other company. They employ a lot of people (should hit two million before the end of the year). We are controversial, but when you are number one, everyone watches what you do closely. With so many stores and so many people working, yes, mistakes are made. Wait, it’s Wal-Mart. I work for a division of Wal-Mart called Sam’s Club. More importantly, I work for Sam’s in Jackson.

Sam’s in Jackson has a problem – our trash cost lots of money.

Anyway, back to this guy that has practiced sustainability longer than I have been alive. He wasn’t pushing anything, he just brought up some numbers to me. He told me that it is expensive to throw away trash in Jackson, then he showed me the numbers. He even multiplied numbers together to show me the numbers can get real big. But he had an idea.

The idea was great - and the idea was grand: if we put less stuff in our trash compactor, it will cost us less to throw away. The idea was, in fact, incredibly simple. So simple, no one had ever thought of it in our building. The numbers guy said, “how we gonna do it?”

New terms were learned by the numbers guy – tipping fees, incinerator, recycle, reuse, e-waste, and the list goes on and on. At every new term, I am putting numbers to it. If you do the research (the numbers guy did) you will simply see that trash in Jackson County is more expensive than 97% of the nation. That puts us in the top three percentile in the nation (insert comment here of things we may be in the lower 97% percentile). “How we gonna do it?”

The “sustainable longer than I have been alive” guy knows this other guy. If you want to know who the other guy is, come out to Sam’s Club and look at the three containers we have on-site. These two guys REALLY know the numbers when it comes to trash and recycling. Numbers guy has nothing on these two, but numbers guy knows they have the answer to “how we gonna do it?”

It’s called a “partnership.” Sam’s Club partners with a local company that is committed to recycling. That company (wait, Northwest Refuse. Might save you a trip to Sam’s) has allowed us to partner with them to recycle material from our business. If we put less stuff in our compactor, we can save money. Numbers guy likes this a lot. A reduction in expense can almost be considered profit. Numbers guy shares this successful partnership with the leaders in his company.

With timing being everything, the initiator at our building that has practiced sustainability longer than I have been alive (again, wait, Larry Bamm - can’t believe I didn’t mention his name earlier) showed me what sustainability was before the president of our company (Lee Scott) rolled out a program that commits Wal-Mart to sustainability.

Once this commitment was made by our company, it became very easy to implement the ideas Larry had had years in advance, and with increased support. Numbers guy embraces the possibility of saving tens of thousands of dollars per year with our buildings commitment to recycling. We have reduced the material we send to the landfill/incinerator by close to 50%. Numbers guy equates this to expenses being reduced by the same 50%.

To wrap this up, I hope to appeal in some weird way to others to look at recycling in a way that will assist them the most in implementing recycling in their lives. If it is monetary, you will save money if you recycle. I pull all plastic out of my trash at home, and have reduced my trash at home by around 40%. Numbers guy measures this by how full his trash can is at the side of the road every week. My CFL bulbs have reduced my electricity bill by 24%.

As for the more important reason to implement recycling in their lives, it will save the earth. This is a broad statement, but I have not yet attained the emotional reasons for recycling. For those of you that have this outlook, I look to learn from you. In my “numbers guy” mentality, you are the ones I learn from the most. I don’t resist you, I just need more time to learn.

Partner with me. I am the one that has the most to learn. If you have any questions about the monetary impact that implementing a recycling program at your place of business, feel free to contact me at Sam’s Club.

My name is David Milis, and I am a member of Recycling Jackson.

Blog Action Day.

Today is Blog Action Day.



Hurray!

Fellow Blog Action Day-ers, Lifehacker.com (a great source, by the way, for life improvement) posted some easy way to live a greener life.

We'd add one: recycle all your e-waste, plastics, and paper. Here's how to prepare your materials.

Go Green!

On outdated hardware and e-waste

Sam’s Club in Jackson partnered with Recycling Jackson for an e-waste event earlier in the year. Yesterday, we partnered up again, and kept a whole bunch of electronic waste from going in to a landfill. Or did we?

A lot of the material we saw today came from some large organizations that apparently had this material somewhere. Some of the old relics included dot matrix printers, copiers last used in 1997, some 386 computers, and I even saw some kind of cash register/adding machine that had to be from the 60s.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad it showed up today, and I know it’s going to a better place. I would just be curious where it came from. Organizations updating their hardware is understandable. One donator today said that there will come a time where disposing of a CRT monitor would require “an act of God.” It was funny, but as I saw old, outdated material roll in throughout the day, I wondered how much was left.

What do large businesses, government entities, schools, community organizations, and mom and pop still have laying around? Where is it being stored? One individual commented today when they saw a government sticker on the side of a very full truck, “are my tax dollars going toward storing that old stuff?” I don’t have the answer, but it seems like a logical question.

Back to the question of did we really keep a bunch of electronic waste from going in to a landfill. From the contributions today, the answer is a definite yes. From the items left behind, the answer may be no. Does an event such as today’s increase awareness, or make someone decide their storeroom is due to be emptied?

Will those that decide that today is the day to rid their life of electronic waste do it properly, or just figure their items will be “ok” in the regular garbage?

[by David Milis, RJ board member/Sam's Club employee]

E-waste drive a truckload hit.

Our fall e-waste drive went really, really well.

Jackson County and the Community Action Agency alone could've made this drive a success. Several truckloads of printers, PCs, and monitors made for a lot of exercise.

Sam's helped us out so much - from marketing to the location, and even some pizza for lunch.

Valley City will load the e-waste to Grand Rapids and work their magic. That's a couple of tons of material that will not be burned or buried in a landfill.

Thanks to everyone for their help!

> Head here for more pictures.

Blog Action Day coming Oct. 15

We're participating!

We made the news.

The Jackson Citizen Patriot ran with our fall e-waste press release. Check it out here for the next month or so.

Here's the full text:

Sam's Club foundation matches grant for $1,000

Recycling Jackson has received a $1,000 matching grant from the Sam's Club Foundation Community Matching Grant program.

The grant will help support Recycling Jackson's education efforts for its upcoming e-waste collection day Oct. 13.

The collection is 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Sam's Club, 3600 O'Neill Drive. Jackson residents can drop off electronic waste, including televisions, computers, microwaves and cell phones.

Suggested donations range from free for cell phones and printer cartridges to up to $25 for a console television.

For more information, visit www.recyclingjacksonmi.org.

Where to e-cycle?

Here's a handy list of places to recycling your electronic gear, besides at the Recycling Jackson site.

[A big thanks to former Recycling Jackson president Travis Fojtasek for help with the list!]

> Apple
Takes back used Apple gear (iPods, Macs, etc.)

> Hewlett-Packard
Recycles PCs, printer cartridges, cell phones, and more.

> Toshiba
Trade-in and recycling program for PCs, batteries, and more.

> Best Buy and IKEA
Both retailers have drop-off locations for used electronic gear.

> Plug In to E-Cycling
Environmental Protection Agency hooks up with manufacturers and retailers for donating e-waste.

> Collective Good
Donate cell phones, pagers, and PDAs to charities.

> Battery Solutions
Uses Pail-Mail system to recycle batteries.

> Rapid Refill Ink
Neat store in the Jackson area that refills ink cartridges for about half the price of a new one. Great way to reduse and save!

> Goodwill Industries
Goodwill has partnered with Dell to take back computer e-waste and peripherals for free. Just drop it off during business hours.

Know of any more? Let us know in the comments!

Keillor calls it quits...with plastic.

[From Garrison Keillor's weekly column on Salon.com]


Sep. 26, 2007 | I am sorry, Evian and San Pellegrino and Dasani and all the other bottled waters out there -- Aqua Velva, Wells Fargo, Muddy Waters, Joan Rivers, Jerry Springer, whatever -- but the current campaign against paying good money for bottled water when tap water is perfectly good (and very likely purer) is so sensible on the face of it that I am now done with you. Fini. Kaput. Ausgeschlossen. No more designer water. Water is water. If you want lemon flavoring, add a slice of lemon. You want bubbles, stick a straw in it and blow.

My father, a true conservative, would have smiled on this. All his life he resisted the attempts of big corporations to gouge him by selling him stuff he didn't need and so he was not a consumer of high-priced water, any more than he would've purchased bottles of French air or Italian soil. No, San Pellegrino and Perrier got rich off the pretensions of liberal wastrels like moi who thought it set us apart from the unlettered masses. We ordered it in restaurants for the same reason we read books we don't like and go to operas we don't understand -- we say to the waiter, "Perrier," to give a continental touch to our macaroni and cheese.

Enough. Man is capable of reform once presented with the facts, and the fact is that bottling water and shipping it is a big waste of fuel, so stop already. The water that comes to your house through a pipe is good enough, and maybe better.

So now I wonder, "What else am I doing that is too dumb for words?" A woman leaned over to me the other night and said, "You'd look so much better with your eyebrows trimmed." This is just the sort of advice a man yearns for -- you don't want to be walking around with eyebrows the size of sparrows for the rest of your life. Thanks for the tip, doll. What else? Maybe there are words I mispronounce, like "harbinger" or "inchoate." I'd be happy to be set straight.

I was in Berkeley, Calif., the other day and drove past a Lutheran church and then a Baptist: Perhaps some stereotypes have leaks in them. And when I was in Berkeley, a man told me in as kind a way as possible that my grasp of economics is fragile and I should not write about it in this column. Probably right.

I knew a boy in the fourth grade who insisted that it was the Chinese who had bombed Pearl Harbor, though fourth grade is sort of late to be thinking such a thing, and when our teacher showed him pictures in a book that pinned the infamous deed on the Japanese, he was sort of relieved to be able to give up his idea and not have people yell at him, "You're crazy." He reformed.

I gave up watching television 25 years ago because I liked it so much even though I couldn't remember what I had watched the day before and could see that if I went on as a viewer my life would become a blank. And now I refuse the iPod because it is an audio bubble that shuts you off from the world, which is where good ideas come from.

Reform feels good, take it from me. To correct course and avoid the reef and find clear sailing is the great tonic of life. A man grows a beard for the pleasure of cutting it off. And now I have the pleasure of boycotting bottled water for tap.

There is much we do not understand -- power cords in the briefcase, for example: You set them in neatly and a few hours later they are completely entangled with each other, and who knows why? -- but the stupidity of buying bottled water in America is easily grasped by even the dullest.

Thirsting for plastic.

Water is expensive.

This according to a New York Times column (Aug. 1, 2007) that pointed out if you got your eight glasses a day from bottled water, you could spend $1,400 every year. Compare that with the $0.49 it would cost from plain old tap water.

Consider this: all that plastic costs barrels of oil. All those bottles cost money and CO2 to ship cross-country. Only 23 percent of bottles are recycled, and states like Michigan don't offer a deposit as an incentive.

Recycling Jackson has reported on the thirst (pun intended) for recyclable plastics: companies can't collect enough used plastic bottles, even though the demand is high. Companies are willing to pay decent money for someone's used Aquafina (which is tap water anyway) bottle.

Plastic bags, however, are a totally different story. They're a pain in the ass, according to a Salon.com story about the difficulties of recycling the jelly-fish like bags:

"Every year, Americans throw away some 100 billion plastic bags after they've been used to transport a prescription home from the drugstore or a quart of milk from the grocery store. It's equivalent to dumping nearly 12 million barrels of oil," writes Katharine Mieszkowski.

Only one percent of those are recycled.

Some have said plastic is better than paper, but you can't grow more oil like you can more trees. "The only salient answer to paper or plastic is neither," says the article.

When I attended a Mariner's game during a recent Seattle, WA trip, I noticed that everywhere I looked there were bins for recycling plastic pop, juice, water, and - yes - beer bottles. And when the game was over (they lost to Texas by one point), the announcer even reminded the audience about the recycling bins.

What do Seattle Mariner fans know that we don't?

I'll admit: I'm a fan of bottled water. It tastes good, it's portable, and I can make a health and wellness justification when I bypass the sugared soda pop for a liter of the clear stuff.

But paying $1 or more for a bottle of the same stuff I flush in my toilet seems absurd, doesn't it? This is the same stuff I use to clean my dishes, wash my car, and brush my teeth. And it's still the safest and cleanest in the world. Some parched countries in the Sahara would give a lot for a teaspoon full of what I watch go down the drain every morning.

So recently I've started drinking plain tap water. And you know what? It's not that bad. I add a few drops of lemon juice if I don't like the taste, plop in a few ice cubes, and away I go. I'm not any less satisfied. My thirst is just as quenched, and I didn't contribute any more plastic molecules that will be around longer than the cockroach.

The critique is two-fold, involving both the use and waste of plastics and the mania behind obtaining fresh water from somewhere besides the garden hose. The more you think about it the more ridiculous it seems.

All that craziness has me thirsty. Time to grab a glass of cool, clear...

Well, you know the rest.

[by Dave Lawrence]

Welcome to Recycling Jackson!

We appreciate you stopping by the Recycling Jackson Reporter - electronic edition!

I'll have to think of a catchier title than that, but it'll do for now.

In the meantime, while we get things set up around here, be sure to stop by our Fall E-Waste Drive on Saturday, Oct. 13. Sam's Club has been nice enough to provide the location and some peoplepower - thanks Sam's!

Any questions, drop us a line at recyclingjackson@yahoo.com - and our apologies if it takes some time for a response.

Stay Green!
Dave Lawrence

Jackson-area recycling sites

Our new Jackson County map is live - check it out here (or click on it to go to a bigger one):


View Larger Map

Go here for a searchable map/database!

City of Albion - Corner of Clinton and Cass streets. Directly behind city hall.

Calhoun County Recycling Center - 12980 27 Mile Road (Albion)
Phone (269) 781-9841, open 24 hours
Glass, metal, newspaper, mixed paper, plastic

Emmons Service Inc. - 913 Water St. Phone (517) 787-8710.
Open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday - Friday; 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday.
Accepts newspaper, mixed paper and magazines, corrugated cardboard, glass, metal, aluminum, plastic, batteries, grass/brush, appliances, motor oil

Grass Lake Township - N. Lake St.
Glass, metal, newspaper, mixed paper, plastic

Great Lakes Waste Services - 1970 Ogden Hwy. (Adrian)
Glass, metal, newspaper, mixed paper, plastic

Henrietta Township - M-106, north of Kennedy Rd.
Phone (517) 596-3374, open 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturdays.
Batteries, grass/brush, glass, metal, newspaper, mixed paper, plastic, plastic foam, white plastic bags

City of Jackson - 209 W. Louis Glick Hwy (Downtown Jackson)
Phone (517) 788-4020, free, open to all 24 hours.
Glass, metal, newspaper, mixed paper, plastic

City of Leslie - City parking lot east of S. Main Street

Liberty Environmentalists, Inc. - 7900 S. Meridian Rd.
(517) 787-1177, Open from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday-Friday; 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturday. Fifty cents per 30-gallon bag; $5 per level pickup load.
Grass/brush, metal, mixed paper

Michigan Center - 913 Fifth Street, Michigan Center
Behind the Leoni Township Offices, (517) 764-4694.
Free, open to all 24 hours

Modern Waste Systems - 7255 Brooklyn Rd.
Phone (517) 536-4900. Open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday - Friday; 8 a.m. to noon Saturday. Non-Customers $2 per visit.
Grass, glass, metal, newspaper, mixed paper, plastic

Northwest Refuse - 2600 Lansing Ave.
Phone (517) 787-3699. Free, open during daylight hours seven days a week.
Grass/brush, glass, metal, newspaper, mixed paper, plastic, white plastic bags

Omnisource - 701 Lewis St.
Metal, cardboard

Recycling Jackson - 1420 W. Monroe
Batteries, e-waste, grass/brush, glass, metal, newspaper, mixed paper, plastic, plastic foam, styrofoam, tires, white plastic bags

Rives Township - State Rd. at Berry Rd.
Phone (517) 569-2232. Open 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. Service limited to Rives residents only. $2 minimum fee; cost based on load.
Glass, metal, newspaper, mixed paper, plastic

Sam's Club - 3600 O'Neill Drive in Jackson

Spring Arbor Township - Hutch’s Food Center, 8025 Spring Arbor Road
Free, open to all 24 hours.

Springport Township - 150 E. Main Street (across from police department).
Phone (517) 857-2030. Free, open to all 24 hours.

Summit Township - 2121 Ferguson Rd.
Phone (517) 788-4113. Free, open to all 24 hours.
Glass, metal, newspaper, mixed paper, plastic

Westwinds Recycling Center - Westwinds Community Church, 1000 Robinson Rd. Phone (517) 750-1111, ext. 23. Free, open to all 24 hours.
Cardboard, metal, glass, plastic, mixed paper and newspaper

Contact us.

To schedule a presentation to your class or organization, or to inquire about our recycling and e-waste services, contact:

e-mail: recyclingjackson@yahoo.com

Phone: (517) 414-6142