Well, today is blog action day. A whole bunch of blogs all around the world are all writing about the environment today. For the past couple of months I’ve been thinking about what I would write today. One thing that I realized is that in the county in New York where I grew up, we had a recycling program. The county gave everyone a red bin to put out to the curb on a designated day, and they would come by and collect the recyclable materials that you had put out. This was such a great and easy way to help the environment by not throwing out newspaper, milk jugs, cardboard, tin cans, and tons of other things. Why doesn’t my town have a recycling program where I am now? I made it a mission to find out information about recycling here in Provo, and what I could do to help reduce my trash.
It turns out that there is a recycling program here. There is even a designated day that they will come by and pick things up. The bin however costs $5 per month added to the utility bill. Well I’m currently a poor college student, and although $5 a month isn’t bad for the bin, it does add up. To top it off, we don’t really have a great place to put the bin in our apartment. So what are my other options. Well the city has posted a list of places that you can drop off assorted “wastes” to recycle them. The table can be found here. There is also a FAQ, and other information about the program that is available on the page.
I don’t have a lot of those things that I need to get rid of. Besides the fact that I don’t want to wander around town dropping off each item at a different place. The solution is found on that page however. It reads:
Provo now has another option for those who would like to recycle but prefer not to have the curbside recycling container at your house. You can now take plastics #1 & #2, cardboard, newspapers, junk mail, phone books, aluminum and tin cans, etc. to the drop-off bin located at the compost station,
1625 South Industrial Parkway.
Compost station hours are: Spring/Summer/Fall, Monday – Friday 8 am – 6 pm, and Saturdays 8 am – 5 pm Winter: Monday – Thursday 8 am – 6 pm
The important part of this is that it says in fine print under that paragraph:
There is no charge to drop items off at this bin. The bin is separated into sections for plastics, paper/cardboard, and metals. Please do not bring non-recyclable garbage to the drop-off bin.
So there we have it. A free option to recycle here in Provo. It looks like I just needed to look into it and now I have found out how to do recycling. Now all I have to do is figure out how to sort the recycling from the regular trash and take it to the drop off location…
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