Know what November 15th is?
IT’S AMERICA RECYCLES DAY!
We think that every day should be a recycling day, but all of America throws its weight behind it to raise awareness on this day.
Rates of recycling have risen steadily since keeping things out of the landfill really starting becoming a thing. In 1980, we kept about 15 million tons of trash out of the dump. By 2013, that number had risen to almost 88 million tons of waste. That’s the most recent year that the EPA can accurately calculate, and it said Americans generated around 254 million tons of trash in 2013. Of that, we recycled or composted around 87.2 million tons of material. This was paper, glass, aluminum, electronic waste, and largely yard trimmings. This gave us a recycling rate of around 34.3%. Not too shabby, eh? Over a third!
To put that in perspective, in Virginia in 2013 we managed to recycle over 41% of our waste!
Virginia – always ahead of the curve!
One town that has really embraced recycling is Manassas. They’ve been crowing about recycling all month long. They even proclaimed November 5th “Manassas Recycles Day” to kick off “RecycleFest.” Residents stopped by to get rid of unwanted waste, which was recycled and kept from the landfill, and this year broke their record with 452 cars passing through in just four hours. The City of Manassas Boys & Girls Club had a fashion show, Project Recycle Runway, that turned old clothes from Savers™ into great fashionable new threads. They also teamed up with American Disposal to start a grant program for Home Owners Associations to expand community-based recycling projects.
We’ll do our part on Friday, November 18th. We’ll join the Retail Merchants Association on Monument Avenue in Richmond to collect all of your recycling from 10-2.
Lastly, the kids in the Osbourn High School Ecology Club made a video to compel everyone to think a bit harder about the importance of finding a suitable spot for your litter, and recycling as much as possible. See their video below, and do your part to improve recycling!