Food expert Michael Pollan has great advice on eating: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” In the increasingly complex world of recycling, we need something equally simply to guide our efforts.
It may be obvious but recycling is one answer to a problem but it’s not the best. Buying and consuming less is better. We all know that.
Our goal then is to keep as much waste out of the landfills where—at least for the time being—it can’t easily be put to other use. To do that, we need to separate what we throw away. What goes in the trash containers goes to the landfill; what goes in the blue buckets has a good chance of being recycled.
 Keep it simple. For those working in the Grand Rapids office, ignore the instructions printed on the blue buckets under your desk and throw in all your paper. White. Colored. Laser-printed. Bound or not (but without staples). If you have lots of specialty paper product (like phone books) or cardboard or books or binders you’d like to recycle, give us a shout and we’ll advise you on the best way to dispose of it.
Wherever you work, whatever you do, print only what you need.
Perhaps our take on Pollan’s advice would be: Use paper. Not too much. Recycle it all.
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We think the two-hole containers in some of the common areas at 2850 are for recycling plastic bottles but perhaps you have a more creative guess. Every email submission gets a prize. |
