Our landfills are getting full fast and up to 30 percent of it is paper -&160;paper that can be recycled and has value.

Monday, February 11, 2002

Our landfills are getting full fast and up to 30 percent of it is paper -&160;paper that can be recycled and has value. I have been to many landfill operations in the past couple of years, and it’s incredible to see all the paper with recycling value being buried. It isn’t just newspapers, I see school paper, gift wrapping paper, packaging from the store, corrugated cardboard, etc. Recent statistics show that our waste has increased about 33 percent, but the population has only increased about 9 percent.

Nationally, Waste Age Magazine reports that only 59 percent of newspaper, 50 percent of office paper, and 24 percent of magazines are being recycled and only 28 percent of the fiber in American newspapers comes from old newspapers. Those are pretty depressing figures. According to the report, contamination during collection appears to be a major problem because materials have been contaminated with food, broken glass or other things that are not acceptable.

When paper is being made from wood pulp, it is a dark brown color. Bleach is added to the mix to get the white color. Brighter white paper has more bleaching, darker paper less. During the bleaching process, some contamination is released into the air, causing pollution. When white paper is made from recycled (old used) papers there is less bleaching in the process because it is already brighter to start with. This is a savings in time, cost, and improved environment to make good quality paper. Recycled content does not mean lower quality or darker color. In fact, actually the opposite is true.

If you have looked closely at the Recycling Instruction Sheets, you will notice that our county recycling program takes almost any kind of paper for recycling. We take old textbooks, encyclopedias, school papers, gift wrap, old greeting cards, magazines, cardboard, boxboard, envelopes (even ones with a plastic window), newspapers (the shiny inserts do not have to be removed), junk mail such as advertisements, and the list goes on and on. The few exceptions to paper products we do not take are frozen food packaging such as bacon boxes, butter boxes or frozen food boxes. They have a wax finish on them and are not acceptable. They belong in the garbage. Make a good shopping choice and purchase products that contain recyclable packaging.

I ran across an interesting article about using trees wisely. It has been estimated that the annual removal rate of urban trees in California was 1.5 percent, which amounted to 262,000 trees. If a fourth of the trees averaged 75 board feet, the annual volume of trees removed annually would be almost 20 million board feet. In the United States about 200 million board feet of usable wood is removed from urban areas annually. If this wood was utilized, it could equate to approximately $100 million of income coming from urban trees. The goal of wood utilization is not to make large amounts of money from urban trees, but to reduce the waste and unnecessarily cutting down of large trees and utilize urban wood resources whenever possible in order to conserve other natural resources.

Trees hold water, offer shade (reducing the need for air conditioning) and reduce the cost of landscape replacement after construction. Using natural resources already in place helps to conserve our environment. Including reuse and recycling of all the paper products we put in the trash each day.

We have recently added new permanent recycling sites in Hollandale, Clarks Grove, and Hayward for the convenience of rural residents. We hope these additional opportunities for rural residents to recycle will be utilized and successful. Check out the county Web site at co.freeborn.

Randy Tuchtenhagen is Freeborn County’s solid waste officer.