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.