Second Chance Toys Donation
Welcome Guest poster, Paul Leonard of recyclingNJ to provide us with an exciting update of how his website is impact recycling efforts in New Jersey. Although his site is New Jersey based, many of his links can be used through the US.
As many of you will be aware, the average US citizen throws away 1655 lbs of trash each year and only recycles 33% making us significantly more wasteful than people in other developed countries. In England, for example, the average person throws away 647 lbs less waste each year and yet the recycling rate is 40% there. They throw away 40% less trash and yet still manage to recycle a higher percentage than we do in the US. Personally I find that a little embarrassing and I’ve been trying to do something about it, where I live in New Jersey.
Back in June I launched a new recycling website for the residents of New Jersey, that I hoped would help make it easier for people to find ways to recycle more of their trash. It is now six months on and we have become really excited at how successful the site has become. In June we had only 68 visitors but that number has steadily grown over the months and we now get of about 50 visitors every day. It has been pretty exciting for us to see the websites popularity increase so quickly, which would not have been possible without help from a lot of other people.
Environment blogs have been instrumental in helping to promote the recyclingNJ website and my previous Green Talk article was very well received, so I thought I would update you on some of our recent developments.
Recent Development for recyclingNJ
Additionally a number of New Jersey towns and counties have agreed to help promote our recycling website on their own recycling pages so I’d like to thank, Atlantic County, Alexandria, Andover, Berkeley, Boonton, Bordentown, Chesterfield, Eastampton, East Amwell, Highland Park, Montclair, Mullica, Old Tappan, Plainfield, Pompton Lakes, Princeton, Rutherford, South River, Westampton and Woodbridge municipalities. It has been wonderful to have their support and to see that many of the people responsible for our communities are actively trying to promote greater recycling in their local areas.
We haven’t been resting on our laurels either. There have been considerable changes to the recyclingNJ website over its first 6 months. We have been busy behind the scenes updating the website code and have introduced some cosmetic changes that we hope make it easier for visitors to navigate our site. More importantly, many businesses and individuals have written to us to ask us to promote their organizations recycling programs and we have been only too happy to oblige (we do not charge anything for this service – if you collect waste for recycling we want to hear from you).
Donated Wheelchairs to be Reused Again
To give you an idea, we have added recycling information for how to recycle unwanted medical equipment (wheel chairs, orthopedic beds, crutches, Zimmer frames, hearing aids….) through our partnerships with Back in Action, Your Resource and Help the Children Hear organizations. We have also teamed up with recycling charities, Clean the World, Second Chance Toys, Pedals 4 Progress and Dress for Success to promote their collections of hotel soap, used plastic toys, old bicycles or women’s office clothing.
Costs More to Dispose than Give Away
The Rescue Mission of Trenton recently contacted us to ask how to get their furniture and Bric-a-brac collections posted on our website. Just three days later we had added their information to our recycling pages as we were so excited about their charitable work, and wanted to do whatever we could to help. I was shocked when they told me that they do not charge a penny to come to your home to pick up unwanted furniture or household appliances. It costs you more to dispose of these items yourself than it does to give them away.
The Salvation Army and Vietnam Veterans of America also run free collection services for unwanted furniture and appliances so we have added all of this information to our furniture and appliances recycling webpage.
As you can see, we have been busy helping to promote waste reduction and recycling strategies in New Jersey and we hope to be able to do a lot more in the future. Please continue to give us your feedback as we really rely on the comments people have given us to guide modifications to the website. I encourage everyone to keep looking for ways to reduce the amount of trash they throw away, both at home and at work. Small changes really do add up to very substantial reductions in waste over time.
Anna here. Thanks Paul for your update. I look forward to hearing from you in the future on your expansion of your site. Awareness is key. Just point people in the right direction.
You all know that recycling is very important to me, especially, when someone else’s trash is someone’s else need. For additional recycling information, check out Green Talk’s many, many article on re-purposing and recycling.
London reccle says
Hello, this is a great blog!
We are a recycling company from London and we really do care about the environment. We would really love it if you had a look at our blog and liked us on facebook.
thanks!
http://www.facebook.com/RubbishLondon