Recycling on the go

We’ve all seen the advertisements for Orbit gum with the catchy tag line “Dirty Mouth? Clean it up!”

Well, now the “clean” gum is going green! Orbit is running a national promotion with Keep America Beautiful – offering us the same opportunity to clean up our planet as they’ve offered to clean up our mouths.

Orbit now comes in different limited edition packages, each with a special code printed on it. If you have one of these limited edition packages of the gum, you can go to www.clean.orbitgum.com and enter the code on your package for Orbit to donate $0.50 to Keep America Beautiful. You can also nominate your city for the promotion finale – a mural painted in a special location, and $5,000.

Free Green Can submitted a proposal to Orbit, suggesting Chicago as the city for the mural – whoop whoop! We’d love to help keep America beautiful. We encourage all our readers to check out the Orbit Website and enter your codes!

March 17th – the day when everyone is Irish. We wear green, we drink green, we eat green – so why not also GO green?

Here are some ways to make your St. Patrick’s Day an even greener event:

• Hosting a party? Buy food and supplies that are eco-friendly – like fruits and veggies, or Solo Cup’s Bare line of paper products.

• Irish Soda Bread. Bake it with organic ingredients, and taste the difference. This already delicious treat just got greener and tastier!

• Choose beer from an environmentally-friendly brewery, like Sierra Nevada.

• Get creative. Make your St. Patty’s decorations out of stuff around the house – cut shamrocks out of junk mail, make a necklace out of green pasta… You get the idea.

• Wear green. Yep, green colored, and green fabric – try organic cotton. You’ll be amazed by its softness!

• Celebrate Earth Day a little early. Get out your trowel and spend this St. Patrick’s day planting something green for the environment! It’s almost time to plant your flower beds anyway, right?

• When you’re at your hometown St. Patrick’s Day parade, find recycling bins for your plastic water bottles, beer glasses, etc.

These tips will help you go green this St. Patrick’s Day, and all year round!

Information in this post is from Solo Cup Co., www.greenupgrader.com and www.npr.org.

You see signs and bins everywhere with different symbols for different products. You hear stories about entire bags being trashed because of one wrong item. You feel confused about it, because sometimes when you go to put something in the bin, you just aren’t quite 100 percent sure.

Well, it’s time to eradicate that confusion and get recycling straight once and for all. Free Green Can wants you to feel good about what you put in the recycling bin, whether at home or out in public.

Here is a list of things that should be recycled, and some things that cannot be recycled:

1. Glass – jars, bottles, any and all glass. Glass is the never-ending product. It can be used time and time again, and its quality never wavers. Whether you reuse glass yourself in your home or put it in your bin, it can and should always be recycled.

2. Aluminum – cans, foil, pie trays, disposable bakeware, etc. Like glass, aluminum products are always recyclable.

3. Tin and steel – your soup and tuna cans are recyclable – but always rinse them out first!

4. Paper products
- junk mail
- magazines/catalogs
- office paper and files
- newspapers
- telephone books
- paper bags
All of these things can be recycled from your own home in most places, but check your local recycling policies to be sure that phone books don’t need to be taken to a special facility.

5. Boxes and cartons – recycle that Life Cereal box but throw away the bag inside first! Put your milk and juice cartons and kids’ juice boxes in the recycling bin – and don’t forget you empty paper towel and toilet paper rolls too! Cardboard boxes also go in your recycling bin.

6. Plastics – this is always one that gets confusing, but there is a way to make it easier – look on the bottom of your plastic bottle or container and find its number. In most cities, plastics with numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 are recyclable.
*A note about plastics: please rinse them thoroughly. Soak the peanut butter jar overnight – rinse out the tray your frozen dinner came in. Those are the things that could cause an entire bag of recyclables to be thrown away.

7. Plastic bags – these must be taken back to your local grocery store; they should not be recycled in your own home recycling bin.

8. Electronics/batteries – don’t just trash your old laptop or cell phone. There are various outlets for recycling electronics, including Best Buy’s recycling program. Take your old electronics with you the next time you go to buy new ones – and take advantage of the available recycling opportunities!

So, now you know what needs to be done in order to properly recycle all your papers, plastics, glass, aluminum and electronics. Recycling regulations do vary by city, so you should check the procedures in your area to be sure, but the above information is pretty standard across the board.

I’ll leave you with these closing thoughts: Remember to always rinse your containers; sort your recyclables when required; take electronics and batteries to the appropriate receptacles; and recycle on!