Recycling

Jacob and I are back in Michigan. On Monday morning, we went on a field trip to the Ann Arbor Recycling Center. I thought that I knew a lot about "Reducing, Reusing, and Recycling," but I learned quite a bit more during our tour. I won't preach on the obvious benefits of recycling, but I will say that I am stunned that so many cities still do not offer it as part of their trash pick-up service. Currently, approximately 30% of all waste in the United States is recycled. It doesn't sound like a bad statistic until you realize that up to 70% could easily be kept out of landfills.

The Ann Arbor Recycling Center facility was built with a large quantity of recycled materials. They have 32 employees who sort much of the waste by hand. They are upgrading to some new-fangled machines that will actually be able to do a lot of the sorting automatically. The building that we were in only had a slight stench to it - nothing like the sewage treatment plant that I visited with Adam's class many years ago.

This is cardboard. Lots and lots of recycled cardboard.

We walked outside to see where the recycling trucks dump their loads.

Jacob like these crushed cans. They are from Ohio, where there is no bottle-return law.