Visit to Your Local Recycling Center
A Visit to Our Local Recycling Center...
Have you been to your local recycling center? I am not talking
about a small drop off station at your local grocery store, but
the actual recycling center for your city or county. Every area
in the United States today has a main recycling center where recyclables
are processed. A simple look in the phone book, or call to your
nearest landfill, will give you the information on where you can
find your local center.
Generally they can be found in an out
of the way place around other industrial type businesses.
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A visit to a recycling center is a very unique experience indeed.
There you will see many things of interest that you just don't
see anywhere else. I recently went to my local center with my
children so that they can start to learn where things go when
we are finished with them, and what they can personally do to
minimize trash in our ever increasing landfills.
The first stop for us at the local recycling center was the glass
bins. My local center doesn't pay for glass, but has a line of
large trash containers for placing your glass in. The containers
are clearly marked with the color of glass they are for. You simply
take your glass to recycle and place it in the recycling container
with the other glass of that color. This glass is then hauled
off, melted down, and used to make more glass.
The next stop for us was the
aluminum recycling station. Our local recycling center has a large
machine to put your aluminum in. This machine rolls and shakes the
cans to get out anything that doesn't belong in them and to insure
the end result is only aluminum.
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The cans are the loaded into a bin and weighed. For
each pound of aluminum you are paid based on the going rate for
aluminum. At my local center that price is generally about $1.30
a pound. Just for reference we recycled eight large trash bags
full of cans and were paid about $22.00. Not bad.
The next stop at the local station was the plastics recycling.
There you separate all of your plastic items based on the type
of plastic listed on the triangle on the bottom of the item. These
items are then weighed and you are paid based on the going rate.
The workers at the recycling center then place all of plastics
into their own sorting containers. From there they will be baled,
sold, and shipped to companies who purchase plastic to use in
their recycling process.
The next stop is the place where you can bring your newspapers
for recycling. Our local center does not pay for them, but offers
you a place to bring them to be recycled.
The final stop at the local recycling center is the payment hut.
It is a small red mobile building where you take a piece of paper
with the weight of each of your recyclables and they total up
what you are owed. Here you have the option of being paid, in
cash, for your items or donating your money to the local charities
who have drop boxes there on the counter.
 As you leave the recycling center you see bales of plastic and
paper waiting to be picked up and transported to their new homes.
It's an amazing sight to see all of the waste generated and the
amount of it which can be recycled with very little effort.
If you have not been to your areas recycling center I suggest
you visit there soon. It makes for an interesting and educational
trip for your children as well. Mine now want to recycle as much
as possible because they see you can get paid for your trash.
It's a start on them learning the real reason to recycle - to
keep things out of the landfill and use them again.
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