12-22-2019

Recycle your Christmas tree curbside! Christmas trees will be collected for three weeks starting the first Monday after December 25 (December 30 – January 17). Christmas trees should be set out for recycling on your regularly scheduled collection day. Place the tree at the curb.

Flocked or fireproofed trees may be placed at curbside for collection; however, they will not be recycled.

Please note:

• All lights, tinsel, ornaments and stands must be removed from the trees.
• If your tree is taller than 6 feet, cut it in half for collection.

12-15-2019

You may have heard that if it’s cardboard, it’s always recyclable. Or maybe you’ve heard that pizza boxes just need to be tossed in the trash. What’s the real answer? Well, it turns out that pizza boxes are a little complicated. Use our cheat sheet to find out what to toss and what you can recycle.

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Leftover Pizza or Crumbs

Leftover pizza needs to go in your Green Waste container. The crumbs do, too! Food — even at crumb level — can ruin batches of paper recycling. Can you imagine little bits of pizza crust living in your roll of paper towels? Ew — no. Make sure they end up in the compost.

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Paper Liner & Napkins

Whereas cardboard is sometimes recyclable, the parchment paper liner and napkins are never recyclable. Why is that? Their paper fibers are too short to be turned into anything new.

These guys spell trouble if they accidentally get in your recycling because they’re excellent at soaking up grease. Any amount of grease can ruin a batch of paper recycling by damaging the paper fibers. So make sure all of these grease-soaked paper products get tossed in the trash.

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Pizza Savers

You know the little plastic item that appears in takeout and delivery pizza boxes? This little contraption, which looks like a three-legged table, is called a pizza saver. Pizza savers are responsible for your pizza making it home safe and sound, without the melted cheese sticking to the lid of the pizza box. Without them, we’d all be eating ugly pizzas stripped of their cheese and other delicious toppings.

That said, be sure to thank your pizza savers properly and then toss them in the trash. They are too small to be recycled.

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A Greasy Box

If grease from the pizza seeps into the box, the cardboard becomes what we call contaminated. Basically, the paper fibers are damaged by the grease and they won’t survive the recycling process. What’s worse, greasy fibers can ruin an entire batch of paper recycling, so they need to be tossed in the trash.

With a greasy box like this, always toss it — at least the bottom half.

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A Clean Box — Or a Clean Lid

If the top half of your pizza box has survived its pizza journey in pristine condition, you can cut or tear it off and recycle it.

If by some small miracle the entire box has pulled through with hardly any sign of grease, make sure it’s completely empty, then recycle it.

12-8-2019

With the holidays around the corner, package deliveries are ramping up around the country. According to one set of numbers, during last year’s holiday rush, deliveries in the U.S. nearly doubled from an average of 45 million to 95 million packages per day.

Even without the holiday surge, online shopping generates massive amounts of packaging waste. It isn’t just cardboard anymore — over the past couple of years, Amazon has increased its reliance on lightweight plastic mailers. About half of all e-commerce transactions take place through Amazon, so how Amazon chooses to ship its products has a big impact on what ends up in our landfills.

The new plastic mailers take up less space than bulky boxes, which allows Amazon to pack more of them into delivery trucks and planes. However, plastic mailers can’t be recycled as easily as cardboard. Like plastic bags, the plastic mailers tangle up sorting machinery at recycling facilities, causing expensive delays.

How can you recycle Amazon mailers?

If the mailer is plastic on the outside with a layer bubble wrap on the inside, or if it is flexible plastic (like a plastic bag) with no layer of bubble wrap: Bring it to a plastic bag drop-off. Just remove the paper label first, since the paper and adhesive can contaminate the plastic film recycling. If you aren’t going to take it to a drop-off, toss it in the garbage.

If the mailer is paper on the outside with bubble wrap on the inside: Because it’s made of mixed materials, it can’t be recycled at all. Reuse it or toss it in the garbage.

How does plastic bag recycling drop-off work?

Certain big box stores and supermarkets put out bins for plastic bag collection near the front of their stores. Once collected, all of the plastic film is melted down and turned into materials such as composite lumber, which is used to make decks, playgrounds and park benches.

Ready to recycle those plastic mailers? Find your closest drop-off location.

12-1-2019

It’s the moment of truth every Christmas tree decorator has to face each year: When you unpack your Christmas lights, will they turn on?

If half your string of Christmas lights won’t light up, or worse yet — the entire string — don’t worry. Repairing Christmas lights is actually super easy! Watch these videos to find out how, no matter what type of lights you’re working with.

Remember: Always unplug your string lights before you start working on them! And if your string lights aren’t salvageable, here’s how to get rid of them.

How to Replace a Fuse on Any String Light (And Avoid Blowing More Fuses)

If your entire set of lights won’t turn on, or the string turns on briefly before going out, it’s likely you’ve blown a fuse. This is a super easy fix!

How to Repair Incandescent String Lights

A simple non-contact voltage tester will help you quickly find a bad bulb.

How to Repair LED String Lights With Removable Bulbs (No Fancy Tools Required)

If individual bulbs on your LED string are removable, you can use a pair of pliers to check the bulbs by hand. Because LED string lights have a different type of wiring, a regular voltage tester won’t work on them, but it doesn’t matter — broken bulbs are easy to identify when once you’ve pulled them out.

How to Repair LED String Lights With Permanent Bulbs (And a Faster Method for LED Strings With Removable Bulbs)

If you want a tool to quickly find where the current is failing, the only option currently on the market is a tool called the LED Keeper. The LED Keeper is a good tool for you if:

• You have a lot of LED string lights to repair;
• Your LED string lights have 100+ lights in them; or
• The bulbs in your LED string lights are not removable.

The LED Keeper gives you a way to find and bypass any broken bulbs in your LED string.

11-17-2019

Thanksgiving is around the corner, and we all know how labor-intensive preparing the big meal can be. But we’re not always aware of how much extra waste we create!

On average, household waste increases by 25 percent between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, according to the EPA. We become so busy during the holidays, it can easily become a time to think less and waste more.

This Thanksgiving, try out these tips to keep some of those extra pounds of waste out of the landfill.

1. Remember to bring your reusable bags when grocery shopping, including reusable produce bags.

2. Choose products that have minimal packaging, or packaging that can be recycled. It’s easier to avoid waste by shopping from fresh produce sections, bulk bins and farmer’s markets. Also, food cans are more eco-friendly than plastic packaging, but they aren’t as green as fresh produce brought home in a reusable produce bag.

3. At home, skip the aluminum pan and use a roasting pan instead. Even though aluminum trays are recyclable, recycling requires a lot of resources, so a reusable pan is a greener choice.

4. Break out your reusable dishes and silverware for the holiday instead of using disposable plates.

5. Use cloth napkins instead of paper napkins — you’ll add elegance and reduce waste at the same time.

6. When serving beverages, opt for tap water over bottled water — you can add some lemon or cucumber slices to jazz it up. You can also make holiday beverages like apple cider, spiced wine or sangria in bulk, instead of serving individual beverage containers.

7. Avoid plastic wrap when storing leftovers by using food storage containers instead.

8. Use natural objects such as gourds, cinnamon sticks, acorns and pinecones to brighten your space instead of shopping for store-bought decor. If you’re feeling crafty, here are some additional ideas from Pinterest:

• Dried leaf place settings
• Acorn napkin ties
• Pinecone turkeys

9. If you end up with leftovers that didn’t go home with guests and you couldn’t finish in time, remember to put them in the Green Waste Cart.

10. Remember to recycle! If you’re not sure if something belongs in your recycling, just look it up in our Recycling Guide!

As important as it is to reduce waste and recycle, no matter how you choose to celebrate, remember to be thankful for who you’re with and all that you have.

Happy Thanksgiving!

11-10-2019

What if you knew there was something easy you could do every day that creates jobs while saving money, energy and water? Actually, there is: Recycling!

To celebrate America Recycles Day, check out these 5 reasons why we should all be recycling, every chance we get.

1. Recycling keeps trash out of the landfill.

According to the EPA, in the U.S. we are currently able to keep 35 percent of our trash out of landfills and incinerators through recycling and composting. In California, we manage to keep 44 percent of our trash out of the landfill. That’s a good start, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement. It’s important to keep as much material out of the landfill as possible because all items that we produce are made from valuable and limited resources. We want to hang onto as much of it as we can for future use.

2. Recycling reduces our need for new raw materials.

Extracting raw materials from the environment is expensive. It also uses up a lot of water and energy. When we recycle, we extract less, which conserves many of our precious (and finite!) natural resources, including trees, water, oil and metals. The more we recycle, the more we protect our resources!

3. Recycling conserves energy.

Recycling saves a lot of energy. Every year, recyclers across the country save the same amount of energy it would take to power 14 million homes for a full year. That’s the equivalent of turning off the power for one out of every 10 homes for an entire year.

4. Recycling creates jobs.

In the U.S., recycling and reuse activities provide 757,000 jobs and produce $36 billion in wages each year. Choosing to recycle isn’t just good for the environment, it’s good for the economy too.

5. Recycling reduces pollution.

The process of extracting raw materials can produce a lot of pollution. Because more recycling means less extraction, it also means less pollution. Even better, when we recycle more, we send less material to landfills. Material decaying in landfills often emits methane, a greenhouse gas 30 times as potent as carbon dioxide, so the less of that, the better!

How Can You Recycle Correctly?

It’s important to recycle correctly! Items that don’t belong in the recycling can damage sorting machinery, causing expensive delays. Also, when the wrong materials get mixed in with the right ones (known as “contamination” in the recycling world), it reduces the value of other recyclables that were sorted correctly.

So how can you find out how to recycle correctly? By using our searchable Recycling Guide. Simply look up any item in our Recycling Guide, and you’ll find tips on recycling, reusing and reducing that item.

Happy recycling!

10-27-2019

November 3 is the end of Daylight Saving Time, which means we have to move the clocks back an hour. Daylight Saving Time is the perfect time to maintenance your smoke detectors!

The risk of dying in a home fire is cut in half in homes with working smoke alarms. When it comes to fire safety, it’s always better to be safe than sorry.

It’s easy to make sure your smoke detector is working properly! Here’s how:

1. Test your smoke detectors once a month. Push the test button to make sure the alarm is working. If it isn’t working, try changing the batteries before replacing the alarm itself.

2. Change the smoke detector battery at least once a year. Find out how to dispose of batteries. If your smoke detector has a lithium battery, you cannot (and should not) replace the lithium battery. Instead, replace the entire smoke alarm as needed, according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

3. Replace your smoke detectors every 10 years. Smoke alarms do not last forever. If you have an alarm that is 10 years old or older, replace it with a new alarm. Find out: Remove each smoke alarm from the wall or ceiling and look on the back to find the date of manufacture. If it is older than 10 years, it needs to be replaced. If it is less than 10 years old, put it back on the ceiling or wall.

What do I do with an old smoke detector?

If you have a photoelectric smoke detector, you can dispose of it as e-waste.

However, most home alarms are ionization smoke detectors, which means they contain a small amount of radioactive material. Dispose of these smoke detectors carefully, as follows:

• Remove any batteries but do not try to dismantle the alarm.
• Send your old detector back to its manufacturer. Locate the name and address on the back of the device, or find the information in the user manual. If you still can’t find the address, check out this list from USPS.
• If you wish to recycle your old smoke detectors, there is one program that will do so, run by Curie Environmental Services. It costs as little as $8 plus shipping to recycle one old smoke detector.