Recycling – How & Why
Recycling is one of the best things a society can do to improve the environment, the economy, sustainable manufacturing and to prevent waste from polluting the oceans. Recycling is a $200 billion industry that generates more jobs than landfills and waste-to-energy plants, and it conserves finite natural resources that will be essential as our population continues to grow exponentially.
Today Americans only recycle 35% of their waste. This level has not changed since the late 1980's. Recycling of plastic bottles has actually decreased. Even this relatively low rate of recycling has reduced annual CO2 emissions by 186 million metric tons, which is comparable to the annual greenhouse emissions of over 36 million cars.
The biggest thing holding recycling rates down is public confusion about what and how to recycle. Not properly sorting and having food and other materials in with recycling can contaminate huge batches of recycled material.
Planet Hudson, LLC is dedicated to making it clear what to recycle and making it easy and convenient for businesses. The following information is provided as a general overview of the recycling we do and what you can do to make the recycling process better and have less contamination in batches of recycling.
With plastic containers, cans, bottles, jars, etc:
- Pour out any remaining fluid or material
- Rinse out well
- Remove and discard caps and labels
We recycle:
- Aluminum cans
- Other metal cans
- All glass
- Plastics 1, 2, and 5
- Cardboard
- All types of paper
We can't recycle:
- Food-contaminated items such as pizza boxes
- Plastics with other numbers or no numbers
- Styrofoam
- Cellophane