Pumpkin Recycling

Get ready to recycle your pumpkins. A roll-off container will be placed at Central Park in the same parking lot as the free wood mulch, which is across the street from Brooklyn Park's Operations & Maintenance facility, 8300 Noble Ave N.  Residents of Brooklyn Park, Brooklyn Center, Crystal, and New Hope may place pumpkins in the container starting November 1 and continuing until November 7.  We will empty the container as necessary and the pumpkins will be composted into new dirt to grow more pumpkins next year.

Free Drug Recycling

This Saturday, Sept. 25th there is a National Drug Take Back Initiative.  This is a first of its kind chance to properly recycle/dispose of all your old or unwanted precription medicine.  See http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/takeback/ for more information and to search for the nearest collection site.  The sites in Blaine, Andover, and St. Louis Park are probably the closets for you, but check it out!!!

Did you get a postcard?

Starting today residents in the 2010 Bulky Waste Curbside Clean Up collection area should start receiving a reminder postcard to get ready for the event on Sept. 18th.  If you live in the area north of 85th Ave N and South of 93rd Ave N you are in the collection area.  Single family through eight unit households may participate by putting out general junk, up to two appliances, mattresses, carpet, furniture, scrap metal and much more. Please call 763-493-8006 with questions or send an e-mail to bpom@brooklynpark.org

Recycling #5 plastic

I received a question about recycling #5 plastic this morning and I thought I should share the recycling options. #5 plastic is most commonly used for yogurt cups, butter containers, and some take out containers. Here are a couple options for recycling #5 plastic…

1) Here is a link to the City of Coon Rapids recycling center. They accept #1, #2, #4, #5, and #6 plastic that is labeled with the plastic number. http://www.ci.coon-rapids.mn.us/recycling/recyclecenter.htm

2) You can also recycle #5 plastic containers at the Whole Foods grocery store in Minneapolis or St. Paul or you can mail #5 to the “gimme five” program. Here is a link on this http://www.preserveproducts.com/recycling/gimme5.html

We are always trying to add more plastic items to our curbside recycling program, but no contractor offered this service when we went out for bid last year. Happy Recycling!

Reuse Ideas

There are so many ways to reuse old stuff and a fellow blogger asked me to share some of their ideas. Here is a link...http://www.environmentalsciencedegrees.net/blog/2010/15-crafts-using-recycled-materials/

2 for 1

After not blogging for quite some time, I'm giving you a 2 for 1 (2 posts in 1 day). The social media workshop I went to today was great and I have many new ideas to connect better with people out there. I'm going to look more into Facebook (thanks Brian), twitter, and Youtube, since everyone uses them. I'm going to set up some google analytics on our website, look into tweetdeck and I may even create a listening dashboard.

To more timely news, don't forget to visit with your neighbors tonight for National Night Out. And if they don't have a recycling container out for the celebration, bring one over and tell them "Dan made me do it".

Social Media

I'm going to learn about social media today. Maybe it will help me write a more regular (and interesting) blog. Or, if you have any tips, please let me know. Wish me luck!