Recycling
Recycling – Why is it important?
Recycling conserves natural resources and lets us skip the harmful extraction and refining process that goes into making products from virgin materials. Making stuff from the materials of other stuff uses less energy and water and stops that stuff from filling our landfills. Recycling one… Plus, recycling accounts for 3.1 million jobs in the U.S.…
Read MoreEPS Food Container Alternative List
EPS is “expanded polystyrene,” commonly known by the brand name Styrofoam™. There are environmental concerns with EPS, including difficulty in recycling, source of man-made marine debris, and greenhouse gas emissions from the embedded energy of the manufacturing process. Additionally, EPS food containers are not fully recyclable in a single-stream process because they break up in…
Read MoreRecycling Used Motor Oil
Did you know that used motor oil never wears out? It just gets dirty and can be recycled, cleaned, and used again. Recycling used motor oil conserves a natural resource and is good for the environment too! Motor oil poured onto the ground or into storm drains, or tossed into trash cans can contaminate and…
Read MoreSecondhand compost bins take recycling to the next level
At Solana Center, we live the values of reduce, reuse, and recycle in all forms. This spurred the idea to offer our pre-loved bins to the community at reduced prices at our store. This is a solution to both provide residents with an opportunity to give their compost bins another life if they aren’t being…
Read MoreFrom the Rotline: Are all Biodegradable Plastics Compostable?
Rotline Question: What is the difference between biodegradable plastics and compostable plastics? Answer: Plastic that is compostable is biodegradable, but not every plastic that is biodegradable is compostable. Biodegradable plastic may be engineered to biodegrade in soil or water, whereas compostable plastic refers to biodegradation into soil conditioning material (i.e., compost) under a certain set…
Read MoreNEW Plastic Bag Recycling Program!
Tell a friend, we’ve got a new plastic bag recycling program at Solana Center! Thanks to our partner Plastic Beach for making recycling easier for plastic materials that can’t go in your standard blue bin. They work to ensure all of the plastic bags and film are staying in the USA and being recycled nearby, keeping…
Read MoreRecyclable Materials Breakdown
Many of us have run into confusion around recycling, not sure what is recyclable and what isn’t. Well, it’s not just you, recycling is complicated. This is mostly because the term recyclable is pretty complicated. While anything can technically be used as a material for something else, whether something is recyclable is different from something actually getting recycled. Recyclable…
Read MoreReduce
Reduce is the practice of making and having less and inevitably disposing of less. Waste reduction is our ultimate goal, not only because it protects our environment from waste and doesn’t add to our landfills, but because it avoids the destructive process the happens upstream of our materials, the harm of extraction and manufacturing. The…
Read MoreReuse to Reduce Waste
Reusing items slows the process of take and dispose. Reusing is our main tool to reduce, since the more we reuse what is already there, the less we need. We can reuse materials that were meant to be disposed of, giving them a second life, or we can choose materials that were meant to be…
Read More#PlasticFreeJuly – Choose to Refuse!
It is no secret how much we rely on plastic in our lives. You can hardly go a few minutes without seeing plastic in some form and now more than ever articles or news stories covering the negative impacts on our environment are prevalent. To most of us, it makes us sad, and mad. And many of us are…
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