Christmas Week Recycling Reminder

Christmas week is here and with all the hustle and bustle, sometimes it's tough to remember what day it is, much less when recycling day is. Fear not, I'm here to tell you that everyone has regular recycling this week except Brooklyn Park residents with Friday recycling collection. Your recycling collection will be delayed one day to Saturday this week.

One more thing, I was out in the snow chasing recycling trucks with our trusty communications coordinator, you can check out where we went at this link...just press play. http://www.brooklynpark.org/sitepages/pid675.php

Recycle Christmas Lights for Free at Snyders and the Hennepin County Recycling Center in Brooklyn Park!

I don't have the scoop on this news flash, but I want to help spread the word. You can recycle old Christmas/Holiday lights for free at participating Snyder Drug Stores through Jan. 10, 2010. The closest one is in New Hope at 2705 Winnetka Ave N. Snyders also gives you a coupon for $5 off a $20 purchase for bringing in old lights. You can also recycle Christmas lights in Brooklyn Park at the Hennepin County Recycling Center (8100 Jefferson Hwy.), through Jan. 10th as well. Other participants are WCCO and X-cel energy, but who knows how to get something to them? Not me.

I have to admit, I just through out 5 strands of old icicle lights last weekend. The good news is my trash day isn't until Thursday, the bad news is I have to dig to the bottom of my trash to get the lights out. Once I'm done digging, I'm off to Snyders!!!

America Recycles Day - Nov. 15

On Sunday (Nov. 15) we celebrate America Recycles Day. In my opinion it is a day to do two things. One, give yourself a pat on the back. Recycling has been a successful way to reduce trash and energy to make new things. Two, do more recycling! Did you know we recycle less than 50% of aluminum cans, glass and plastic bottles? Pledge to do more and don't forget to recycle your bottles and cans when you are on the go. It is not that tough to carry the empty can or bottle home and put it in your recycling cart. Recycling just 1 aluminum can saves enough electricity to run a TV or computer for 3 hours or a 60watt compact fluorescent light bulb for nearly a day! Did you ever leave a light on all day and think it was wasteful? Now you know one aluminum can in the trash is just as wasteful. I'm not trying to guilt you into recycling, just spreading the work that a little effort saves a huge amount of energy. Happy America Recycles Day!!!

Sustainability Roundtable

Better late than never...there is a community sustainability roundtable today at the Brookdale Library, 6125 Shingle Creek Pkwy, Brooklyn Center. A workshop for city staff is from 3 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., reception/networking from 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. and a community workshop from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. The roundtable will discuss energy reduction initiatives, active living for better health, and much more. For more information visit the Alliance for Sustainability at www.afors.org

See you there!

A good cold day.

Temps in the 20's with snow and wind was not the best way to spend Saturday, Oct. 10th, but when you have 1,280 friends come to see you, I would call it a good cold day. We had a great turnout at our recycling drop off day, thanks to all who worked in the cold and thanks to all those that participated in a successful event. With that I concluded my spree of five Saturday clean up events from Sept. and Oct. that had me pretty worn down. This Saturday I think I'm going to sleep!

Drop off reminder, junk details

Please see my Sept. 30th post for information about our Special Material Drop-off event tomorrow, Oct. 10th.

Results are in from our curbside clean up in Brooklyn Park from Sept. 19th (we don't get the official results until we get the bill and now I have the bill). We recycled 960 appliances and 45 tons of scrap metal. We also collected 300 tons of bulky junk like couches, carpet, mattresses, etc. To put it another way we averaged 17 lbs. of scrap metal per household and 113 lbs. per household of bulky junk. Nice job Brooklyn Park residents!

And the winner is.....

The person who guessed 417 cans is 1st and the person who guessed 400 cans is 2nd. What am I talking about you may ask? I had a "block" of crushed aluminum cans at my recycling display this past Saturday at our Operations & Maintenance open house. The person guessing the closest wins a gift certificate to Girvan Grille, the next closest gets a free pizza from Godfathers. So how many cans were there? Exactly 427. Thanks to everyone who came to the open house and took a guess!