Mixed Recycling

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Mixed Recycling
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Before Recycling

• Always remember REDUCING comes first.
• Recycling is better than throwing away materials,
  but the products still were made.
• Creating anything, takes energy and resources.
• Energy and resources should be conserved.
• Before purchasing ask--How was this product
  mined, logged, built?

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What is Mixed Recycling?

• Recycling means turning trash into something
  useful.
• Mixed recycling is the recycling of many
  different types of plastics, metals and paper
  into new products.
• Allied Recycling picks up our mixed recyclables.
  Here is a video showing how it works
  http//www.alliedwastetwincities.com/recycle-bank-
  cycle.php

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Why do mixed recycling?Environmental Benefits

• Recycling turns what could be waste into useful
  products.
• At MPS, Allied Waste takes our mixed recycling
  and sends it to mills, which turn plastics back
  into plastic, paper back into paper, cardboard
  back into cardboard and aluminum back into
  aluminum!

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Why do mixed recycling?Environmental Benefits

• Recycling almost always saves energy.
• Using recycled aluminum scrap to make new
  aluminum cans uses 95 less energy than making
  aluminum cans from bauxite ore, the raw material
  used to make aluminum.
• Recycled cans are typically back on the self in
  two months.
• The EPA found that recycling can reduce climate
  change.

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Why do mixed recycling?Environmental Benefits

• Recycling means manufactures do not have to mine
  virgin materials.
• Mining can be very harmful to the environment,
  and a very dangerous occupation.
• Mining for Gold, which is used in many
  electronics is particularly dangerous, and
  harmful because gold is mainly found in remote
  locations.
• Extracting a single ounce of goldthe amount in a
  typical wedding ringrequires the removal of more
  than 250 tons of rock and ore, even in model gold
  mines

Surface mining
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Why do mixed recycling?Environmental Benefits

• Reduces Waste
• Waste and what to do with it is a growing
  problem. Each year in Hennepin County we
  generate enough waste to fill the Metro Dome 11
  times!
• Thats about seven pounds of trash per person,
  per day!
• MPS waste is sent to the HERC incinerator

Pictures from the HERC incinerator, MPR
Photo/Stephanie Hemphill
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Why do mixed recycling? Educational Benefits

• Provides an opportunity to learn where products
  come from and what happens to them after we
  finish with them.
• Provides an opportunity to think about our daily
  actions. How do our actions affect the earth,
  and how does what happens to earth affect us?
• MPS also created Green Reports for each school .
  These give each buildings carbon footprint, and
  can be used to see how buildings match-up.

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MPS Mixed RecyclingPROCEDURES

• Place blue mixed recycling bins in convenient,
  noticeable and busy areas.
• Hallways
• Classrooms
• Cafeteria
• Make sure recycling bins are not too full
  
• So people arent forced to use the trash instead
  of recycling.
• Prominently display recycling signs and
  information.

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Mixed Recycling Procedures

• Dont forget your electronics can also be
  recycled.
• Electronics contain metal, which takes tremendous
  amounts of energy to extract, and is often done
  in dangerous and polluting ways.
• Recycling electronics is a way to avoid those
  problems, because the metal in electronics can be
  re-used reducing the need to mine
• Cell phones, and computers and often re-fitted
  and given to people in need.

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MPS Mixed RecyclingPROCEDURES

• Stop and think before you put something in the
  trash.
• Ask, Can it be recycled?

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MPS Mixed RecyclingPROCEDURES

• At MPS there is no sorting. All mixed recycled
  materials go in blue recycling bins