Even little Christmas trees (like mine above) need to be mulched! You can recycle your Atlanta Christmas tree with Keep Atlanta Beautiful on January 9th, 2010.

Size doesn’t matter when it comes to recycling your Christmas tree this year. Keep Atlanta Beautiful invites metro Atlanta and Decatur residents to transform their Christmas trees into mulch this year with their annual “Bring One for the Chipper” program. As an added bonus, after saving your tree from a sad fate in a landfill, you can even request a pile of mulch for your own yard! Here’s how, direct from the Keep Atlanta Beautiful website:

The mulch from these trees has been used for playgrounds, local government beautification projects, and residential yards. The high quality, weed-free and pest-free mulch can be obtained for your large-scale landscaping project free of charge. Contact Davey Tree Service at 770-451-7911 for more information or download the Mulch Request Form.

This year’s event will take place at two Home Depots here in Atlanta from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, January 9th, 2010:

• 650 Ponce de Leon Avenue (map it!)
• 2525 Piedmont Avenue, Atlanta (map it!)

And Keep Atlanta Beautiful would like to extend a big thanks to Boy Scout Troop 298 for their service in helping unload the trees this year!

Don’t live in Atlanta? Just click here for the Keep Georgia Beautiful website where you can type in your zip code to find a recycling drop off point near you.

So come be one of thousands of Georgians recycling their trees into useful organic material and keeping them out of a landfill! Peggy Denby, the Executive Director of Keep Atlanta Beautiful, thanks you and encourages you to spread the word! You can also check out their website for more information.

We set up cardboard recycling containers from B Green Services along the race course just beyond the water stop tables; at the bottom, I'm holding my very small bag of trash leftover after bagging up four large sacks of paper cups and plastic water bottles!

Wow - recycling at Atlanta’s road races has been an ambition of mine for quite some time and yesterday, thanks to our volunteers and B Green Services recycling, we managed to recycle paper cups and plastic water bottles for 2,025 runners and dozens of race volunteers for the Silver Comet Half-Marathon! We have been preparing and strategizing our approach to recycling at this eco-friendly race for several weeks, starting with printing flyers on recycled cardboard for the race goodie bags, to silkscreening B Green Services t-shirts on a variety of recycled thrift store purchases, to cajoling volunteers to come out at 5 a.m. on a Saturday morning for a noble cause.

With the start line, finish line, and four water stops along the out-and-back course, we divided up pop-up cardboard recycling bins, trash bags, plastic gloves, and breakfast food for each stop. We met at 5 a.m. at the race start line at the Mable House where we set up bins for the runners and volunteers at the start before heading out to our respective water stops. We led my Dad (my #1 volunteer) to the first water stop and Zack (my other #1 volunteer) dropped me off at the second water stop while he headed onto the third (Angela and Brooke took the fourth stop). Ingrid and Emil worked the start and finish lines and my Mom came out to water stop one to help out, too. I had the pleasure of working with Anne and Jim Baker for the duration of the race as the lead coordinators for our water stop! Anne is a brave soul who teaches eighth graders at Floyd Middle School and helped guide the groggy teenager volunteers in their water stop duties that morning.

Within the hour, it started drizzling which then became a bit of a downpour which then subsided to a steady rain and then… you get the idea – it rained pretty much the entire morning. But everything held together beautifully, the kids did a great job handing out water and prepping cups, and the runners had better aim than I expected when recycling their paper cups. As someone who has never actually watched a race before (usually I’m on the receiving end of the water), it took some adjusting to get used to being on the other side – and we had a lot of fun!

When all was said and done, we had four big bags of recyclable material and less than one cubic foot of trash going to a landfill. Zack had slightly more trash at his water stop, but that’s because someone brought Dunkin Donuts for everyone.

Thank you to everyone that came out and helped – B Green Services recycling volunteers as well as Silver Comet Races and Get Fit Atlanta volunteers – for a soaked, successful race day! You can also check out more photos on facebook…

B Green Services will be providing race recycling at the 2009 Silver Comet Half-Marathon. Interested in volunteering to help? Email me at jenny.p@mac.com!

This year, the Silver Comet Half-Marathon is going to be eco-friendly with race recycling provided by B Green Services! The race starts in Mableton (west of Atlanta) and is an out and back course along the Silver Comet Trail with a finish line at the Silver Comet Depot. B Green Services will have recycling bins strategically placed near each of the water stops along the course and will have one of our volunteers work with the water stop volunteers to ensure all recyclables go into the bin and anything else goes into the trash (although most everything out there will be recycleable).

As race recycling is something that I’ve been pasionate about for a while now, I’m looking forward to volunteering this Saturday! If you’re interested in volunteering, just send me a quick email (jenny.p@mac.com) or leave a comment below. We would love to have a few more people help! Thank you to those who have already committed to helping us recycle!

The Silver Comet Half-Marathon has become an annual event put on by Dana Greene, founder of Get Fit Atlanta. It’s a great, flat course, and we’re excited to work with Dana, who is also an avid recycler, gardener, and athletic enthusiast. Stay tuned for part II: a post-race recycling follow-up to come next week!

Well, we’re about to change all of that. Race recycling (and the lack thereof) is something that has bothered me for a very long time (read here), but now we’re going to start working with B Green Services to provide race recycling services across metro Atlanta. Emil Bekyarov heads B Green Services, which currently provides complete recycling solutions to hotels and restaurants around Atlanta, and we’re going to work together to institute race recycling at the Silver Comet Half-Marathon in conjunction with Dana Greene of Get Fit Atlanta! I’m incredibly excited about this and will be posting more about it in the near future, so stay tuned!

Are you interested in race recycling? Do you know of a specific race or race production company that could use our help in recycling at their race(s)? Would you be interested in volunteering with us to make race recycling a reality? Please leave a comment below and let me know!

Postponed! I just put up this blog post and then checked my email and saw a follow-up email from Southeast Green saying they’re rescheduling this event. But stay tuned and I’ll update this when the event is back on!

Are you a business owner who has made the switch to green packaging? Or a supplier of green packaging? Southeast Green invites you to join them for their first lunch and learn on August 21, 2009! Co-hosted with Green Chamber of the South and Green Plate, this event is for businesses with an interest in green packaging resources.

• Where: Radial Cafe, DeKalb Avenue (map it!)
• When: 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
• Who: Restaurants, retail stores and anyone looking for resources for green packaging
• Cost: $15.00, lunch included

Limited seating available. So register here today!

The following is courtesy of the Lake Claire Clarion (the local newspaper of an intown Atlanta neighborhood) and was printed in their August 2009 issue:

The Only Biodiesel Pump in Atlanta Is Right in Our Backyard

If you’ve found yourself on Arizona on the other side of DeKalb, you might have noticed a shipping container in a parking lot, sandwiched between a warehouse and a brick office building, that appears to be a pumping station. This is Atlanta’s only biodiesel pump, a 24/7 self-service kiosk operated by Refuel Biodiesel, a program of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE). Founded in 2006, Refuel collects used cooking oil from restaurants and kitchens in Atlanta and processes it locally into biodiesel for the Atlanta market.

“Our locally-based production model aids local waste management and significantly decreases the energy costs associated with feedstock and fuel transportation,” the program states on its Web site. “Furthermore, because we are part of a nonprofit organization, all proceeds from the Refuel program are used to promote responsible energy solutions in the southeast.”

Who uses the biodiesel fuel? Is it available to the general public?

Refuel Biodiesel’s pump is located in the Lake Claire neighborhood at 250 Arizona Street near the intersection with DeKalb Avenue (map it!). The self-service pump is B20 with plans to add a B100 nozzle in the future. Here is what their site said about who can use biodiesel fuel:

• Biodiesel can only be used in vehicles equipped with DIESEL engines.
• Biodiesel can NOT be used in vehicles equipped with gasoline engines.
• The use of biodiesel MAY affect your vehicle’s warranty coverage, check with your auto manufacturer to confirm allowable usage.
• Refuel Biodiesel is not responsible for any damage resulting from biodiesel usage.
• If you are unsure about biodiesel usage, contact us first.

Interested in learning more about biodiesel and which vehicles can use it? Visit Refuel’s Web site at www.refuelbiodiesel.org.

Hopefully with the new plates and bowls, we can start to squeeze out the use of styrofoam and plastic products around the office!

Yesterday, my spirits soared when I walked into the kitchen at work and saw stacks of ceramic plates and bowls on the counter. Yes! My boss and I have “discussions” from time to time on the merits of reusable plates, bowls, and cups versus the styrofoam that currently stocks the shelves, and I have requested that we please acquire enough plates and cups to completely eliminate the need for plastics and styrofoam (see my previous blog about recycling in the office). We do have a mish-mash of cups and plates in the cupboards that serve most of our team members’ purposes, which is awesome, and now we have plenty of both to go around now – so nobody has an excuse to use anything else!

It’s the small steps.

On a side note, I had this exact same conversation twice last week with two different team members:

• Me: Would you mind using a coffee mug from time to time instead of using styrofoam every morning?
• Offender: We have coffee mugs?
• Me: Seriously? We have an entire cabinet shelf full of them. Right here. Take your pick. (I open the cabinet doors in the kitchen)
• Offender: Huh. I never knew we had those.
• Me: Wait, you’ve worked here a year and a half and never in that time did you open a cabinet door in the kitchen?
• Offender: No, I guess I didn’t. But I don’t mind using the mugs. Too bad I’ve been using styrofoam all this time. Oh well.

After two people claiming that they had no idea we had real cups and plates in the kitchen cabinet, I put up this hand-written note in front of the styrofoam cups as a deterrent!

In general, I try not to berate people too much, instead encouraging them to choose a more environmentally friendly option, but c’mon. Really? You’ve worked some place for a year and half and didn’t think that the kitchen cabinets might contain, I don’t know, kitchen stuff like mugs?? Both of them said they would use mugs from now on. At that point, I made a hand-written sign and placed it in front of the styrofoam cups for all to see, politely suggesting that they please consider using regular cups instead of styrofoam.

In another small victory, I walked in and saw a coffee mug on another team member’s desk for the first time in his two years of working there (previously, he had lived and died by styrofoam). I immediately noticed it, but wasn’t quite sure when he had made the switch, until he said, “Jenny, did you notice that I’m using a real mug today?” And I said yes, and thank you!!

My boss also bought more cups last week (red, restaurant-style plastic cups which we can fit a lot of in the cabinets), for which I was grateful. Luckily, I am not alone in my quest for a more sustainable office, and we have agents who are just as frustrated by the use of styrofoam. Collectively, we seem to be shifting things. I just hope there’s an advocate in each work place to keep people moving in the right direction!

Jenny,

How would you go about starting a nonprofit organization that’s a hybrid between environmental and arts? I’m talking about reuse — specifically, a creative reuse center. I recently learned about these wonderful places that turn trash into treasure by collecting materials that would ordinarily be discarded, and offering them for sale at very, very low prices. Sometimes it’s samples from printers, designers, and manufacturers, or clean waste materials, industrial discards or byproducts. Paper, fabric, wallpaper samples, plastic things, leftover framing materials, mill ends, scraps. Anything that’s clean and could be used for arts and crafts. I like to call it “reusables.” A lot of other cities have reuse centers.

Here are a few:

• SCRAP – Scroungers Center for Reuseable Art Parts, San Francisco: http://www.scrap-sf.org/
• EastBayDepot for Creative Reuse, Oakland, CA: http://www.east-bay-depot.org/
• The Scrap Exchange, Durham, NC: http://www.scrapexchange.org/
• SCRAP – School & Community Reuse Action Project, Portland, OR: http://scrapaction.org/

Cobb County has something similar called “Teacher’s Supply Store.” The items are offered at no charge (free!!) but as the name implies, it’s only open to teachers and home-schoolers, and it’s not open all of the time. [Similar to Materials for the Arts in New York: http://www.mfta.org/.] I’m looking to start a reuse center that’s open to the public, 6 days a week.

Besides featuring a variety of materials for art, the reuse stores also offer arts & crafts workshops that incorporate education about recycling and reusing – as in, “Look what you can make with this stuff instead of throwing it away!” People have fun, and less stuff goes into the landfills.

I’m running into 2 obstacles here.

1. Location. Space is expensive. I need to find a commercial property owner to donate space to this nonprofit: retail, workshop, and possibly warehouse space.
2. Tax-exempt status – “501(c)(3)” – this can take a while, so if we’re going to offer donors a tax deduction NOW, we need to team up with an existing nonprofit that already has tax-exempt status.

Any suggestions?

I love Susan’s idea and here were some initial thoughts that I had:

I think a good place to start may be with local galleries or art studios to get their thoughts on spaces, your target audience, etc. One that comes to mind is Wonder Root over on Memorial Drive (whom I believe is a non-profit as well). Perhaps as you start collecting materials, you could tie in with an existing gallery to offer workshops until you get your own space. Also, my friend has been looking into some fairly inexpensive studio space over in StudioPlex in Old Fourth Ward. Cheap studio space may be a way to get started while you work on a bigger place that could also serve as a warehouse.

What about going to local art festivals or art walks and talking to those artists that are already using recycled materials? They might have some ideas and it could help introduce you more to the art community.

So, I am asking all of you for your suggestions! Who do you know that might be a good contact for Susan? Someone with gallery or warehouse space? Someone willing to share a space where she could conduct workshops and classes?An existing non-profit she could get tied in with? A creative audience that would love a store like this? School teachers, parents, after-school camps who would love to take their kids there? Susan has a very well-thought-out business plan that I’m sure she’d share with interested parties – and I know there are like-minded people out there who would love this idea as much as I do! So let me know!

“You know, I can’t believe how many people act so surprised when I bring my own to-go tupperware to a restaurant for my leftovers! I hate styrofoam and that’s such a simple solution to wasteful food containers – I don’t know why more people don’t do that!”

I have to admit, the first thing I said was, “that is a good idea! I’m going to start doing that!” And it’s so easy! So, let’s start a quiet revolution – next time you eat out (at one of our Atlanta farm-to-table restaurants, of course!), take your own to-go food container and leave the plastic, styrofoam, and paper products behind.

P.S. If you’re looking for a more sustainable coffee, Kathy and I sat down at the Dancing Goats, a local Decatur coffee shop that serves organic and fair trade coffees from Batdorf and Bronson Coffee Roasters.

Tommy is getting around and bragging about not recycling during his Georgia tour

Oh yes, the Georgia Department of Community Affairs (DCA) has launched a new marketing campaign highlighting the stupidity of not recycling. The website, www.YouGottaBeKidding.org, centers around four characters (fictional or real?) and their arrogance behind their reasons for not recycling. “”It seems really involved,” “Why would I?,” “It seems really involved,” and “No one’s taught me how.” And these characters serve as a punching bag for all of us passionate about recycling to voice our strong opinions on how, why, and where they should recycle. On the website, you can also look up where to recycle in your community, measure your carbon footprint, and follow these shenanigans on facebook and flickr (check out the photo albums here!).

The Atlanta Intown paper reported on their Go Green Intown blog:

A recent study determined that approximately 40% of waste produced by Georgians is actually recyclable, and with a recycling industry the scale of which is second only to California, Georgia needs the recyclables that its residents are throwing into landfills.

Check out more on the website www.YouGottaBeKidding.org!

In addition to DC’s initiative (which hopefully other states and municipalities will soon follow), the United Nations has now called for a ban of plastic bags altogether. In 2008, the Ocean Conservancy stated that plastic bags were the second most prevalent form of litter in our seas (cigarette butts took first place).

“Single use plastic bags which choke marine life, should be banned or phased out rapidly everywhere. There is simply zero justification for manufacturing them anymore, anywhere,” said Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme. His office advises U.N. member states on environmental policies.

Steiner’s declaration accompanied a UNEP report that identifies plastic as the most pervasive form of ocean litter. According to the report, “Plastic, the most prevalent component of marine debris, poses hazards because it persists so long in the ocean, degrading into tinier and tinier bits that can be consumed by the smallest marine life at the base of the food web.”

Neither of these concepts is new. I’m pretty sure the practice of charging for plastic bags can be traced back to ancient Europe and, in China, the ban is already in effect with heavy fines for violation. Now, we just have to get Atlanta and Decatur on board!

You can read more by clicking here and here!
(And thanks to my brother for sending this along!)

Hi, I found your blog and we are a catering company in Decatur and we are trying to turn our operations green with hopes of eventually becoming zero waste.  We are trying to find locations where we (and our customers) can drop off items to be recycled.

Also we are going to begin composting and have inquired with Oakhurst Community Garden about dropping off items there.  Do you know of any other locations where we can drop items in case we have more items than they can handle?

We are also looking at using the compostable cups, plates, and utensils so I am curious to see how your experiment with the cup from Inman Festival is going.

Thanks for your help.

April Higdon
Bistro in a Box
307 E College Ave, Suite B, Decatur GA, 30030
Office 404.941.7799

Below is my response to April with my suggestions. I’m interested to hear your ideas! Soon, I will be researching corporate recycling resources in Decatur and Atlanta (such as Waste Management, etc.).

Thanks for your email! That’s great that you’re moving your business towards being more green – I get pretty excited about recycling at work and enjoy composting at home. When it comes to recycling, it depends on what you’re looking to recycle. The DeKalb Farmers Market is probably one of the closest locations to you for recycling and they take just about everything, it just needs to be separated out. Emory also has a program (which they operate out of the CVS parking lot in Emory Village). DeKalb also does curbside pick-up, so I actually bring all of my office’s recycling home and mix it in with my own and put it out for pick-up. But I imagine with a catering company, you’ll have recycling on a much bigger scale! I’ll look into corporate recycling programs to see if there’s any sort of pick-up service for businesses.

As for composting, you could also try the Lake Claire Land Trust up the road – are you familiar with it? Also, I would check with local schools that have gardens to see if they have compost piles and could use extra compost (I posted a blog about school gardens a while back). The same thing goes for universities like Agnes Scott and Emory – they may have compost piles, too.

DeKalb Farmers Market has a compost pile and I know they give classes, so you might want to check with them and ask if they accept “donations” from other businesses. DeKalb County itself also has a commercial composting facility where residents of the county can go pick up free compost (click here for the website), so you might want to check with them to see if they’ll accept your contributions.

Depending on how your space is structured, you could even keep a decent-sized compost bin and offer for Decatur neighbors to come help themselves for their gardens, which keeps you interacting with the community and could increase awareness of your catering business. And that means you don’t have to make trips anywhere, assuming enough people come to pick up (and we do have a lot of gardeners around here!).

Oh, and one more thing. Do you serve coffee when you’re catering? Because a business called JavaSoil is staring up here in Atlanta, which is a fertilizer made from used coffee grounds. They’ve been recruiting local coffee houses in Decatur and Virginia Highland to recycle their old grounds with them and, if you’re interested, I can put the two of you in touch and you could give him your old grounds, too.

If you know of additional resources, please leave a comment below – and I’ll continue to research it myself, too!

Experimenting with compostable plastic cups. Day one: May 13th 2009. (I even stuffed the cup with compost to help get it started biodegrading.)

At Inman Park Festival a few weeks ago, we got a couple cups of lemonade. As usual, I held onto the plastic cup for the rest of the festival and took it home with me to recycle. As I was about to put it in my blue recycling bag, I noticed that on the side of the cup it said, “Made of corn. Please compost.” Currently, my neighbors are trying their hand at composting two plastic “to go” containers that don’t seem to be disintegrating too quickly, so I figured we could give it another shot with a compostable plastic cup.

So, here is a picture of day one of my experiment to see how long it will take for this compostable plastic cup to biodegrade. I will take pictures periodically and post them on here to check on progress. In the meantime, you can read my earlier blog post here with facts on compostable corn plastics and a photo of my neighbors’ biodegradable “to go” containers. Have you tried to compost corn plastics in your home compost pile? Let me know how it’s working for you! Thanks!

• What: Go Green Get Rewards Festival
• When: Saturday, May 16, 2009 from 12 p.m. – 5 p.m. with a 3 p.m. performance by Dionne Farris
• Where: Kenny’s Alley at Underground Atlanta at 50 Upper Alabama St., Atlanta, GA 30303
• Cost: FREE!

ATLANTA – “Going Green” is all the rage…and with good reason.  Celebrate the movement and reward yourself at the FREE Green Rewards Festival at Underground Atlanta on Saturday, May 16 from noon – 5 p.m. in Kenny’s Alley. The festival will celebrate the launch of www.GoGreenGetRewards.com, a volunteer rewards program created to support environmental non-profits and reward social activism.

The event will feature live music with special performance by Grammy nominee Dionne Farris as well as the blues, jazz and funk band, Room 2 Groove. Take a glimpse at what else you can expect at this worthy festival:

• Children will enjoy creating crafts from recycled materials at the green kid zone while being captivated by the one and only Captain Planet. REI will present their PEAK program a fun way to educate and entertain children of all ages.
• Shop our green vendors to purchase environmentally conscious products.
• Presenting sponsor REI will host an “Eco-fashion show” featuring the latest in eco-fashions.
• Bring your old electronics for free onsite electronic recycling and take advantage of green giveaways throughout the day.
• Non-profits including the Captain Planet Foundation, Sierra Club, Georgia Organics and Southface will be on site.
• Vendor giveaways, totaling more than $2,000 in FREE merchandise you can win.

The green event strives to leave no footprint on the environment while simultaneously educating the public about the importance of environmental awareness. Ride Marta, bring refillable bottles for your drinks, electronic items to recycle, dress in your recycled best for the fashion show, or just show up to get your green rewards and enjoy the music and activities.

There are still opportunities to participate as a sponsor, nonprofit partner, and/or vendor.  Contact Tammy Allen at 678.344.6032 or
tammyallen1@comcast.net for more information.  

About Underground Atlanta: Conveniently located near the Georgia State Capitol, Georgia Aquarium, World of Coca-Cola, and the Martin
Luther King Jr. History Center, Underground Atlanta is a great place to start the day visiting downtown’s attractions and events. Located in
the heart of the city, Underground offers a wide variety of shops, restaurants and activities for everyone to enjoy. Explore six blocks, twelve
acres, three levels and 225,000 ft. of shopping, restaurants and entertainment, as well as the restaurants and clubs in Atlanta’s hottest
nightclub area, Kenny’s Alley!  Be sure to visit www.underground-atlanta.com for more information or call Underground Atlanta at 404-523-
2311.

If you need more info:
www.GoGreenGetRewards.com / Festival Contact:  Tammy Allen – 678.344.6032 or tammyallen1@comcast.net.
Underground Atlanta Media Contact:  Tara Murphy / Ashley Hesseltine – 360 Media, Inc. – 404.577.8686 or info@360media.net.

Here’s a link to Atlanta’s freecycle yahoo group inside the perimeter: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Freecycle-ATL-ITP/

And for a freecycle group in the greater Atlanta area, please visit their site here located on the main website:
http://www.freecycle.org/group/United%20States/Georgia/Atlanta

As an example, last week my next door neighbors posted their broken gas grill up on the Atlanta yahoo freecycle site and within an hour, they had seven responses from interested people. Within a few hours, they had hauled the grill up to the curb where a woman and her husband came by to get it. As a result, the grill, propane tank, cover, etc. were all saved from going in a landfill. And someone received the gift of a free, new-to-them-grill they get to tinker around with and fix.

So check it out for items you may be interested in or to post items you no longer want! Just remember to be quick – items go fast!

A statewide look at how much recyclable material ends up in landfills:

• 4.3 pounds: the amount of garbage that Georgians send to landfills every day
• 12.9 million: tons of garbage sent to landfills last year
• 1.7 million: tons of out-of-state garbage sent to landfills last year
• 40 percent: amount of garbage that is commonly recyclable materials (ie. plastic, glass, aluminum, etc.)
• 12 percent: amount of garbage that consists of compostable food waste

To say this disheartens me would be an understatement… HOWEVER, being one to look on the bright side, that means if we can all get people to work on recycling the 40% of potential materials instead of sending them to the landfill, that means only 7.5 million tons instead of 12.9 million ends up underground indefinitely. That would also lessen our per-person-garbage impact to 2.58 pounds instead of 4.3.

So please encourage those around you to recycle! If it means you start a recycling program at work that involves just the co-workers that sit closest to you, that’s a fantastic effort. You can either take the recycling home with you or make a pit-stop by a recycling center on your way home and drop it off. And then work on expanding it. Offer to recycle people’s plastic water bottles for them. Take home some extra bottles and cans after a friend’s party. I’ve found at my work place (and other places), many people are willing to recycle, even if it’s not a habit at home. Or maybe I’ve just gently reminded them to bring me their Coke cans after I’ve found them in the trash one too many times… Either way, we’re definitely cutting down on our per-person-garbage output!

The City is selling 95 gallon rolling recycling bins – they look just like your Herbie, except they are blue. The City paints on your house number and attaches the recycling schedule to the top and delivers it to your driveway. All you have to do is send a check for $70, payable to the City of Atlanta, Department of Public Works, 55 Trinity Place, Suite 4800, Atlanta, 30303-3531. It took about two weeks from check to delivery. I have heard that Wal-Mart and Home Depot may have some that are cheaper but we could not find one.

Still no excuses not to recycle here in Georgia!

My recycling bin under my desk at work (dwarfing the little garbage can)

your own bins? Some people will argue that recycling everything in sight can be a bit of an inconvenience, but I’ve found that it’s not so bad. In smaller companies (like the one I work for), there isn’t always a recycling program. So why not start your own?

In our office, we’ve always recycled every imaginable type of paper, but never the tea bottles, the diet coke cans, the cans of soup, the plastic bags, and everything else. So a couple of years ago, I set up a trash can in the kitchen (with instructions) for everyone to dispose of their recyclables. It didn’t work out that well in the kitchen since there wasn’t really enough room for multiple trash cans. So I moved it under my desk. And, as it should be, the recycling trash can is bigger than my regular trash can – indicative of how much more recycling we should be doing instead of trashing.

Since then, I’ve gotten just about everyone in the office on board with recycling everything. They come by my desk to drop an item in the bin, I thank them, they may ask a question that leads into an impromptu mini-class on recycling, I hand out information about residential recycling in DeKalb County (see below), and once or twice a week, I cart off a garabage can full of recyclable materials that would have otherwise gone in the trash.

It’s not perfect – there’s still the guy who insists on drinking at least two Dasani water bottles a day, and “we” have a hard time letting go of the styrofoam cups that proliferate the kitchen cabinets, but we’re making progress. So if you’re frustrated by the lack of recycling in your office, don’t be. Just start your own recycling program and others will follow – there are bound to be some like-minded people.

For information on residential recycling and having the county or city come out and pick up from your house, please click the appropriate link below:

• Application for & information on DeKalb County’s Curbside Recycling Program
• Fulton County recycling centers
• City of Atlanta recycling guidelines and container ordering
• City of Decatur recycling and map of pick-up services & drop-off locations
• Gwinnett County’s Clean & Beautiful campaign (with steps to recycling at home and at work)

And below is a list of everything that can go into the City of Atlanta recycling bin. All recyclables are placed together in the bin and are separated for recycling at the processing facility.

• Paper: all paper products (except boxes/paper with food contamination)
• Shredded paper in a clear plastic bag
• Glass: all bottles and jars (rinse; remove the lids)
• Aluminum cans
• Steel (tin) cans
  
• Plastic: all food containers and plastic bottles (please rinse out) – NO PLASTIC BAGS, HOSES, PIPES or FURNITURE
• Cardboard, broken down or cut to fit in the bin (keep it dry) (NO STYROFOAM)
  
  To find recycling drop-of sites near your home or office go to www.earth911.com

I think she’s onto something. It takes more than a garbage can with a big sign on it saying “Save Mother Earth.” (While I agree that we should save mother earth, it also seems to have become background noise to some.) People have to want to recycle and participate. Luckily, runners tend to be a bunch that have environmentally conscious people among their ranks, so it would be a matter of how to get it started and spread the word…

Ironically, running in and of itself is one of the more environmentally-friendly activities, we just need to make sure we take advantage of our opportunities to keep it as neutral as possible by recycling the hundreds of water bottles we use. This is definitely something I’ve been thinking about for a while and my marketing mind is working through the possibilities. Do you have ideas / thoughts? Let me know! More to come on this in the future, I’m sure…