Where can I find information about recycling (plastic) in my community? This year, my high school started a club called Go Green, where we (obviously) try to make the school and community a greener place. One thing I%26#039;ve noticed is that the students in our school alone use a lot of plastic water bottles. I%26#039;m looking for a way to get students to recycle water bottles. I%26#039;d really like something simple, like a bin that can be filled with the bottles to be sorted later. I don%26#039;t want the students to be discouraged or turned off from recycling by something too complicated though. I live in a small town of about 6,000 people so there aren%26#039;t a lot of local options for recycling. Is there a company or organization online that provides a simple service like this?

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

Hello,

There are a couple of options you can look at:

Earth 911 is a site that lists local recycling options based on zip code. It may be worthwhile to look there and see if there are local plastic recycling companies.

The option about talking to your town is a good one. Many towns offer recycling services to schools. Usually it requires the school to initiate the service and they provide pickup, etc.

Another option is to check out a company called TerraCycle. They have a program open to some schools where they collect plastic bottles as a fundraiser. TerraCycle makes a vermicomposting fertilizer product that they botte.

Regarding the collection, an easy way to do this is to engage an art teacher and ask them to assign it as a class project. Utilizing the boxes that paper gets shipped to your school in, have the art students come up with creative ways to decorate the boxes and communicate the message. This also eliminates the need for you to purchase containers to collect bottles in. Finally when those containers get to the point of replacement, you can recycle them with the other cardboard generated by your school.

Hope this helps!
Adam Solid Waste/Recycling Consultant
www.earth911.org
www.terracycle.com 100% 1 Vote

Other Answers (2)

• Try your city garbage department.....or......
  Plastic water bottles....hmmm...start a project with the kids building a green house of capped water bottles glued together, start growing some stuff, talk O2 and CO2 with them......create future environment engineers.....
  
  
  If you have water bottles that need further sorting after beeing thrown in a bin, then better teach the kids how to do the final sorting. If every body did final sorting we didnt have to export recycle mix to china. Maybe our own industri could take advantage of it. I see Seattle area recycling companies every day loading recycle mix and ship it overseas. 0% 0 Votes
• your council 0% 0 Votes