Recycle Your Styrofoam and Help Reduce Homelessness

Do you have a foam cooler that's beginning to wear out, or have you been accumulating foam packing pieces that you hate to throw out but don't know where to take for recycling? Even though the City of Greensboro isn't able to accept styrofoam as part of the curbside recycling program, there is still a way to recycle your clean, dry styrofoam, and as an added bonus, your donation of styrofoam can help Tiny House Community Development, Inc., reduce homelessness.

Tiny House Community Development is a 501(c)3 Nonprofit organization working to build tiny house communities throughout North Carolina. They can take one standard-sized lot and place several tiny homes on it, creating a community and helping to make safe, permanent, affordable housing for those experiencing homelessness. THCD works with local nonprofit housing organizations to qualify potential residents, to whom the tiny houses are leased based on their income and current situation. THCD is currently working to develop tiny house communities in Greensboro, High Point, and Winston Salem, and there is already a finished project in Greensboro, the Hammer Tiny House Community, with 6 tiny houses occupied.

You can donate any clean, dry styrofoam, from takeout containers and egg cartons to foam “bricks”, coolers, and other packaging. They cannot accept foam “peanuts”, so please recycle those by reusing them. Please make sure there are no labels or tape on the styrofoam. You can drop off your foam at the outdoor recycling containers behind the Tiny House Community Development facility at 1310 West Gate City Boulevard in Greensboro, between McCormick Street and Neal Street and across from the Kaplan Center for Wellness.

Happy Recycling!

To learn more about the Tiny House project, click here:

https://www.tinyhousesgreensboro.com/

To learn the details about exactly how the foam is recycled, click here:

https://www.tinyhousesgreensboro.com/recycling

You can also find What's Good in Greensbroro? on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Whats-Good-in-Greensboro-848569635208317/ . See you there!

Styrofoam image from Pixabay https://pixabay.com/photos/styrofoam-packing-white-recyclable-3294019/

Image of THCD Recycling center from https://www.tinyhousesgreensboro.com/

Recycling Standards for Greensboro Will Be Enforced

Recycling can help save the environment, but you have to do it right.

It's fantastic that Greensboro has curbside recycling, because so many places don't. However, the City's contamination rate, which means regular trash found in the recycling bin, is a whopping 21%, as opposed to the national average rate of 5%. That's not what's good in Greensboro!

The City isn't going to stop the recycling program, thank goodness, but it is going to have to carry out new measures to try to keep trash out of the recycling stream. Recycling carts will be inspected and tagged if they contain trash, and a notice will be sent to you if your bin had trash in it. If multiple notices are necessary, the City will take your recycling cart. Please don't let that be you! If you're not sure what is and what is not recyclable, you can see the breakdown in this article:
http://whatsgoodingreensboro.blogspot.com/2014/11/city-issues-recycling-guidelines-for.html

You can also download the City of Greensboro's waste collection app, explained in this article:
http://whatsgoodingreensboro.blogspot.com/2018/04/another-new-app-to-help-greensboro.html

If you want more detailed information about what is or what is not allowed in the recycling bin, you can also visit https://www.greensboro-nc.gov/departments/field-operations/recycle

Here's lots of ways to recycle other things that the City might not collect:
http://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2016/02/how-to-recycle-if-you-dont-have.html

Trash can cause major problems in the recycling stream--it can even endanger workers at the sorting facility. Let's keep everyone safe and do it right!

You can also find What's Good in Greensbroro? on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Whats-Good-in-Greensboro-848569635208317/ . See you there!

Image credit: Pixabay https://pixabay.com/en/recycle-bin-container-recycling-24543/

City of Greensboro Issues Recycling Guidelines for 2015

The City of Greensboro has released the new recycling guide for 2015, and I notice a lot of great changes! recyclables are still picked up on an every-other-week schedule, but the scope of recyclables accepted has been broadened, especially for plastic. Remember when you could only recycle #1 and #2 plastic? While that was great for milk jugs and soda bottles, it still left us with yogurt and pudding cups, microwave-dinner-plates and margarine tubs knocking around.

Well, not any more! According to the handy 2015 recycling guide, you can now recycle almost any kind of plastic, from small food containers (empty and dry, please!) to big ol' plastic lawn chairs, jugs, and buckets. They do not take garden hoses, plastic sheeting, or plastic bags, but you can recycle bags at many area grocery stores, donate your old hose, and...why would you give up plastic sheets? Use them for dropcloths! And to settle the age-old debate of whether or not to leave the caps on the plastic bottles, the official word is that it's fine (although I would recommend leaving the caps off of milk jugs so that they can dry out and won't smell oogy, but that's a personal choice)

Greensboro also accepts most kinds of metal--aluminum, steel and tin cans, pots and pans, and even aluminum foil, which used to be persona non grata in a recycling program. As with the plastic containers, please make sure they aren't all gloppy with food. Rinse them out. The city even takes aerosol spray cans; just remove the caps. Please do not put cords, car parts or electronics out for recycling (that stuff is hazardous waste).

Paper and glass are easy--all kinds of glass bottles and jugs (no lids), just no mirrors, windows or dishware. All kinds of paper, cardboard and chipboard (stuff like cereal boxes) is acceptable (even pizza boxes!), just don't put paper towels, tissue or diapers in there. That's biohazard stuff!

All in all, I would say we have an excellent recycling program here in Greensboro. The best part, besides the handy curbside pickup, is that you don't even need to sort the things into separate containers--everything that can be recycled just goes into the brown container and to the curb, and they take care of it from there, bless their hearts. Now there is no excuse whatsoever not to recycle, so go for it!

You can also find What's Good in Greensbroro? on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Whats-Good-in-Greensboro-848569635208317/ . See you there!

Image from Pixabay http://pixabay.com/en/woman-girl-black-female-rubbish-160281/ This girl isn't as lucky as we are, because she has to sort stuff.