If you are not participating in the recycling effort, I encourage you to do so. It does not take a lot of effort. Every week or so, bring your recyclables down to the Blair Recycling Site located at 3rd and Colfax Street in Blair. These recyclables can include tin cans, aluminum cans, glass of any color, newspaper, white and colored paper, cardboard, cereal boxes or paper board and plastic.
Your help in separating the recyclable out prior to their arrival at the recycling center would be appreciated. By doing so, you will help the volunteer save hours of labor doing the separation at the site.
You will need to separate the various plastics into three categories. On the bottom of the plastic container, you will find a small triangle with a number in the middle. These numbers should be used to divide separate the plastics. Plastic pop containers will have a number 1 in that triangle. Plastic white milk jars will have a #2, while colored containers such as detergent bottles may also have a number 2. The colored #2s do need to be separated from the white plastic making up the plastic milk jars and other containers. If you have plastic with numbers higher than ones or twos, they can not, unfortunately, be recycled, and need to be disposed of in the normal disposal methods.
While I was helping on Saturday, the powers to be had me sorting paper including white, colored and magazines. If not separated out at the home, volunteers at this station actually have to take each piece of paper and make a decision as to where it should go. It literally takes hours of very tedious work to get this job done as more and more paper is being turned in. White paper should be separated from the colored paper. Off color paper, envelopes with see through plastics, shiny paper and others need to be separated into colored paper rather than the white paper. Magazines and newsprint also need to be separated either at the home or by the volunteers. Everything that comes with the newspaper can be recycled as newsprint.
Volunteer groups are always needed at the Recycling Center. Your group can be assigned a date by calling Margaret Sidebottom at 426-3379. It would be good to have eight to ten people participate in the effort. By volunteering, participants gain a great deal of knowledge as to how to separate the recyclables into products.
The volunteers will also notice the extreme professionalism in which the recycling center is run. The core group of volunteers who are there every week have the program down to a science. A large baler processes the newsprint which is loaded using a elevator. Cardboard is processed using a second baler. Glass is chipped using a glass crusher that allows it to be used as gravel on county roads. Plastic is unloaded into large bins that, when filled, are baled using one of the two balers. Tin cans are crushed still using a machine developed in the 90s by Dick Lippincott and Herman Hovendick. It is still going good. Paper is deposited into large boxes that are then transferred to semis and marketed.
Profits from the recycling center have been used for a variety of environmental grants for Washington County. These profits are increasing as processors are finding that products coming from the recycling center are superior to any other centers in their quality.
Again, if you do not recycle or if you have not participated as a volunteer in the recycling association, I invite you to do both. You will be glad that you did and be happy that you no longer are contributing to Mount Omaha at the Douglas County Landfill.
