It’s Easy To Be Green, Week 2

We got a little off track with all of the storms, but I'm happy to bring you another installment of Lichterman Nature Center's twelve week It's Easy To Be Green program that MLGW employees are participating in.

This week we are "Thinking Outside the Garbage Can." Recycling is easy to do, and it takes very little time. Recycling paper, plastic, glass, steel, and aluminum saves not only natural resources but also the energy that goes into making and transporting them.


Action Items

• Use your municipal curbside recycling collection program or recycling drop off centers.

• Recycle aluminum and steel cans, glass bottles and jars, plastics, paper and cardboard. When you recycle, you send less trash to the landfill. You will also help save natural resources like trees, petroleum and other raw materials.

• Squash your aluminum cans! Crushed cans take up less space in recycling bins.

• Empty, rinse out and sort (if necessary) all containers for the recycling bin. No broken glass, please.

• Fold all cardboard containers and paper boxes. Place them in the recycling bin instead of putting them in the trash bin.

• Put junk mail, old newspapers, telephone books, catalogs, and magazines into paper grocery bags to be recycled.

• When shopping, examine all packaging to determine if it can be recycled. Look for the symbols #1 PEPE and #2 HDPE. These containers are recyclable in the City of Memphis’ recycling program.

• Take plastic planting pots to Lichterman Nature Center. The staff reuses them to propagate native plants.

• Too much junk mail? You can stop this unwanted mail by going to Catalog Choice.

Benefits of Recycling

• Reduces our reliance on landfills.

• Conserves natural resources by reducing the need for raw materials.

• Protects our health and the environment by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and water pollutants.

• Saves energy. Recycling an aluminum can uses only 5% of the energy required to make a new one. Recycling glass uses 50% less energy. Every ton of paper recycled saves 60% less energy, as well as 17 trees, 7,000 gallons of water and six pounds of air pollution.

Compared to using materials once, throwing them away and then replacing them, recycling makes good sense. Recycling benefits the environment by reducing natural resource damage and pollution that occurs when extracting virgin materials in order to manufacture new products. Materials collected for recycling have already been refined and processed once. Manufacturing the second time around tends to be cleaner and less energy-intensive.