Reuse & Recycle

At home, at work and at school, Americans have successfully engaged in recycling programs–and one of the best success stories is paper.

In 2005, a record-high 51.5 percent (51.3 million tons) of all paper consumed in the U.S. was recovered for recycling. The American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA) hopes to increase that number and has set an ambitious goal of 55 percent recovery by 2012.

Every American can do his or her part. Although each community’s recycling programs may be different, you can generally recycle newspapers, corrugated containers (cardboard), direct mail, magazines and catalogs. Check with your local municipality to find out what you can and cannot recycle.

The AF&PA Recycling Awards were created to recognize outstanding individual, business community and school paper recycling efforts. In 2006, the program was expanded to include a category for schools.

This year’s award winners are:

Ed Hurley Memorial Paper Recycling Award (for individual achievement)

• Joel Ostroff, Macon County, North Carolina

AF&PA Business Leadership Recycling Awards

• Small Business: Bluegrass Regional Recycling Corporation, Richmond, Kentucky
• Large Business: Brewer Science, Inc., Rolla, Missouri

AF&PA Community Recycling Awards

• Small Community: North-field, Minnesota
• Large Community: Seattle, Washington

AF&PA School Recycling Awards

• Classroom: Heber Springs High School, Heber Springs, Arkansas
• Schoolwide: Mountain Home High School, Mountain Home, Arkansas
• College & University: tie between the University of Colorado at Boulder in Boulder, Colorado, and the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon

“This year’s Recycling Award winners have exhibited innovation and social responsibility,” said AF&PA President & CEO W. Henson Moore. “Their accomplishments in recycling have set new precedents.”

Fortunately there are a few equipment manufacturers in the world whose products are so well made, you can trust a reconditioned model to be a cost effective way of getting all the features and performance of a new model.  The advantage for businesses like yours is you have the opportunity to buy, rent or lease premium brand equipment at non-premium brand prices.

Xerox builds its digital printer and copier equipment to the highest industry standards.  Their customer service is unrivalled.  The result is that previously owned Xerox printing equipment is among the most reliable equipment, new or used, available for purchase, rent or lease.

There is reliable reconditioned Xerox equipment available over their entire model range.  Whether you need digital printing presses for a large print shop, or a printer/scanner/copier for a small office, there are options for you to have Xerox equipment where you work. 

Just as there is a reconditioned Xerox machine to suit your purposes, there are financing options to suit your budget.  Whether you want to buy, rent or lease, you can find a plan that works to allow you to have a Xerox much more quickly than you thought possible.

A reconditioned Xerox machine also makes it easier for existing Xerox users to move up to a model with the features they need.  Even better, when they move up, they will be able to sell their old Xerox equipment and make the move more affordable.

The option to acquire reconditioned Xerox equipment is so popular, Xerox has set strict standards for the reconditioning process.  Your Xerox-approved reconditioned machine, whether purchased, leased or rented, can be covered by Xerox’s machine service agreements.

Not every reconditioned Xerox reseller meets Xerox’s standard for reconditioning.  You need to be careful that the reconditioned Xerox equipment you get for your company is from a Xerox-approved reconditioning specialist.

CanAm imaging is committed to being your supplier of choice for reconditioned Xerox imaging machines.  With a 40,000 sq. ft., reconditioning facility, we are able to offer you the Xerox machine you need with the financing option you want.  CanAm is a Gold Level Xerox Value reseller and our reconditioned Xerox imaging products exceeds Xerox’s standards for reconditioning.

Recycling is one of the easiest as well as most effective ways that you can help the environment. There are plenty of different projects at home you can separate from your trash for this purpose. It is convenient if you buy plastic trash barrels and label them for individual products.

You should have one for glass, plastic, and cardboard. If you drink soda from cans then have one for those aluminum cans as well. Find out where you can take each of these full barrels to be recycled when you need to. There should be centers for them locally around town.

You will often find receptacles out there that allow you to place these items into at collection spots. They are just huge containers that will get emptied out on a regular basis. This is perfect when the community doesn’t have any other method for taking in the items to be recycled.

If your community doesn’t offer them you need to see what you can do to get them in place. You can contact your local officials in person or with a letter asking them to consider offering them. Explain your concerns that without such receptacles in place people won’t be encouraged to recycle in your area.

The concept of recycling can extend to your schools and place of employment as well. Do your best to get this important issue recognized everywhere you can. In many instances people just need to be educated and then reminded about the benefits of recycling for our environment.

Your information can motivate them to take part in it. Don’t overlook the importance of letting children know either. They are often very excited by recycling and find it to be thrilling. They can often help encourage their parents to take part in such efforts as well.

Buying products that have been recycled such as paper products is a great way to show your support for these efforts. You will notice some greeting cards are made from them. Even supplies such as napkins used in fast food restaurants can be made from recycled paper.

It is also very simple to carry around a large mesh bag when you are going to shop for a few items. Rather than getting a paper or plastic bag from them you can place your purchased items into your own bag. Look for one that is durable so it you can reuse it over and over again. 

With paper comprising up to 40% of the municipal solid waste stream, paper recycling is an obvious and easy way to reduce waste in the workplace. Just by doing the simple task of recycling paper and using recycled paper, trees are spared — every ton of paper made from paper recyling saves approximately 17 trees. Cutting down carbon-absorbing trees contributes to global warming, soil erosion, habitat destruction, and other environmental problems. Paper recycling also makes good business sense — company disposal costs can dramatically decrease with the advent of a paper recycling program.

Reprocessing can turn recycled paper into other paper products numerous times before the paper fibers are too weak to use. White office paper retains much of its value and goes into products such as tissue, paperboard, stationery, magazines, new office paper, and various other paper products. Mixed paper, which includes glossy and colored paper, envelopes, and sticky notes, is less valuable than white paper but also can be recycled into various products. Newsprint and corrugated cardboard can find new lives as the same or similar products. White ledger paper, computer paper, corrugated cardboard, newspaper, paper packaging, envelopes, and other mixed papers can be recycled in most areas.

There is no reason not to use recycled papers. They print as well as virgin papers, work well on laser printers, and can divert millions of pounds of printed waste away from the landfills and back into the mainstream.

Recycled papers save our valuable natural resources, save energy, save our trees, create less toxic bi-products, and help our over-crowded landfills.

Using 100% post-consumer recycled papers and less bleaching agents also means less chlorine and that is the next major issue to creating a healthier atmosphere to live in. Chlorine causes Dioxin which, when mixed with other compounds, causes cancer. What is that cost to our medical bills and to ourselves?

Buy recycled paper and print on both sides. When using paper in the office, print on both sides of the sheet and recycle the paper when you are finished. By recycling one ton of paper, you can save 17 trees, almost 7,000 gallons of water and more than three cubic yards of landfill space.

Let us go into some techniques to recycle!

Make recycling bins readily available; make sure your home and office have a recycling bin that is just for papers! Keep them out in the open and label them properly!

Recycle your empty ink and toner cartridges. Almost eight cartridges are thrown out in the United States every second of every day. That’s almost 700,000 cartridges per day.

Look for recycled products for when you buy things Do not take a plastic bag home from the supermarket but take a trolley or a own bag with you.

Recycle your old newspapers!

Reuse your morning coffee cup!

We need to address these issues more actively. Our waters are polluted, our air is contaminated, and our landfills are so clogged that we have to send our waste downstream. Let’s wake up, and do something about the problem, buy recycled paper now, before it’s too late. So do follow some of the recycling techniques that I have suggested to have a better place to live in!

The first question to ask is what really is recycling? Recycling is the process of collecting materials that are often considered trash and remanufacturing them into new products that can be resold and used again as brand new the benefit is one that we do not need to destroy Mother Nature for this! It is made possible by people who separate the recyclable products from their trash and send the items to a recycling center where the products are reprocessed into new items. Recycling can also include reusing products for different purposes in your own home instead of throwing them away, such as using an old coffee can as a planter or a milk carton as a bird feeder.

Next question would be what is computer recycling? Every year 3.2 million tons of electronic waste, mostly from computers, is dumped into U.S. landfills every year. Many computer parts can be reused or recycled into new parts or scrap metal. Electronics are quickly becoming America’s fastest-growing trash product, and they are taking up huge amounts of landfill space. What most people don’t realize is that these computers contain toxic chemicals such as lead oxide, mercury, nickel, zinc and cadmium, and they are very hazardous to humans and the environment. Consumers need to be aware that almost all computer parts can be recycled and reused.

Computer recycling is the process of recycling and refurbishing old computer parts into new, usable parts. You can either send your old computer to a refurbishing business to be fixed, cleaned and resold or donated to schools and non-profit organizations, or you can send it to a recycling facility where metal, plastic and glass parts can be broken down and molded into new parts.

Here are some parts of the computer that can be recycled:

• Glass monitor
• Keyboard
• CD Rom drive
• Plastic case
• Cathode ray tube (CRT)
• Cables
• Copper in power cord
• Metal from circuit board
• Printer cartridges
• Batteries

The benefits of recycling computer are a thousand fold such as Computer recycling helps the environment in three important ways:

1. It saves scarce landfill space
2. It avoids damage to the environment and human health, by ensuring harmful materials such as lead are handled property.
3. It enables useful components and materials, such as metals and plastics, to be recovered for re-use and recycling, rather than thrown away

The Computer Recycling Programme includes all of these benefits and provides an environmentally sound means to dispose of computer waste.