Recycling Box News
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Linking Global Warming and Recycling
by Justine Fallon
The New Oxford American Dictionary has chosen "carbon neutral" as the 2006 Word of the Year. Being carbon neutral involves calculating your total climate-damaging carbon emissions, reducing them where possible, and then balancing your remaining emissions. The Ad Council recently launched a series of TV and radio ads with the slogan "Fight Global Warming," which is hoped will soon become as familiar as "friends don’t let friends drive drunk" - another of the Ad Council's successful public service campaigns. Even MTV is getting into the action. In April, they launched a campaign called "Break the Addiction" to educate and challenge their audience to stop global warming. One high profile component is that audience members must recycle something in order to gain entrance to one of their popular studio programs. Throughout the year, MTV will point to the recycling container as a reminder of simple acts that can make big impacts on the planet.
A recent poll by Environmental Defense indicated that 71% of Americans are convinced that global warming is occurring. 94% of those polled said that they would be willing to recycle glass, cans, and newspapers to save energy and reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that are released by the burning of fossil fuels. With all the media buzz surrounding global warming it's an opportunity to remind people locally that recycling is one way that people can pitch in to reduce global warming and become more carbon neutral. Stay tuned for more ways to encourage western Massachusetts residents to reduce and recycle more of their waste to save energy.
** Learn more about climate protection at the next western MA MRC meeting on March 8, 2007 **
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MassRecycle spearheads paper recovery campaign
by Jessica Wozniak
MassRecycle gathered 19 star players in the State’s paper recovery game to plan a media campaign aimed at ending the practice of throwing recyclable paper in the trash. The organization estimates that each year well over 1 million tons of valuable fiber from Massachusetts is landfilled and incinerated, at a net estimated cost of $200 million.
With a pledge of matching funds of $25,000 from MassDEP for the first $50,000 raised, MassRecycle has outlined a plan to estimate the losses more accurately, and to inform the State’s residents, businesses, and institutions of the magnitude of waste and how we can all benefit by turning it into a commodity through recycling.
Being a university town, Amherst has long grappled with the challenge of thousands of temporary residents discarding tons of bulky trash in June. The $1600 MRF mini-grant Amherst received for outreach to students and new residents was an opportunity to see if the number of discarded, curbside sofas could be reduced.
"Our state disposes of over 6 million tons of trash each year, exporting about a quarter of it to other states," said MassRecycle President Claire Sullivan. "At least half of that trash is valuable material which is just going to waste. Everyone involved in this campaign is passionate about putting the paper back on our shelves instead of in a hole in the ground."
The MAB has been invited to assist MassRecycle with this statewide paper recycling campaign and has agreed to help. Several members of the MAB will serve on the project's Steering Committee. It would be our goal to use this campaign to help increase paper recycling in western MA.
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February 16, 2007 
