NEW YORK – How bad is your disposable razor for the environment? The question is gaining attention among consumers amid a growing global campaign against plastic waste, with cities and countries introducing bans on single-use plastic bags and straws.   Don’t worry, there’s no talk of banning your razor, which isn’t exactly single use. Still, billions of plastic razors and refill blade cartridges get tossed in landfills each year. Municipal recycling programs in the U.S. will not accept them because they are sharp objects made of mixed materials.   What can be done? Well, there are no perfectly convenient options, aside from foregoing shaving altogether. For those concerned about an eco-friendlier shave, here are some things to know.  

The fate of disposable razors

  The Environmental Protection Agency once estimated that 2 billion razors and refill blades get tossed out in the U.S. each year. That figure is widely cited by recycling advocates and startups marketing eco-friendly razors. Gillette, the world’s leading razor brand, also cites the number on a website detailing a new recycling program for razors launched earlier this year.   But the figure appears to date back to an EPA campaign from the late 1980s against a national “garbage crisis.” A 1990 “Environmental Consumer’s Handbook” on the EPA’s website says the U.S. produces “2 billion throwaway razors and blades” each year. The EPA now says it does not track the impact of disposable razors on the environment and has no update on the figure.   It’s likely even higher. Last year, more than $1.2 billion in disposable razors were sold in the U.S, according to market research firm Euromonitor. Prices vary widely but many disposables are less than $1 each.  

How to recycle your razors

  There are few options for recycling razors. The French company BIC started a razor recycling program in France a few years ago that didn’t last.   Now, Gillette is trying out a similar idea in the U.S. in partnership with TerraCycle, an organization that specializes in hard-to-recycle waste. All brands of razors are accepted.   The easiest option is mailing the razors to TerraCycle, but the shipping costs are on you. At no cost, you can deliver razors to drop-off centers on TerraCycle’s interactive map. But with only 200 locations so far, the option is not practical for many. (There’s only one site so far in California, and six in Florida.) Stephanie Moses, an account director for TerraCycle, said the program is growing quickly, and the map will be updated to show 350 locations by mid-August.  

The comeback of the double-edged safety razors

  Remember the old-school safety razor your grandfather used? It’s making a comeback. Trendy direct-to-consumer brands have reintroduced them to younger generations, most prominently Bevel, the grooming lined aimed at black men, and Oui Shave, one of the few safety razor brands aimed at women.   Safety razors are built to last, usually made of materials like steel or chrome. The only waste is the steel blades, and some municipalities recycle them. Oui founder Karen Young said she’s developing a map for her site to show which ones. Newcomer brand Leaf Shave allows customers to mail back their blades in a custom-made tin box for recycling.   The tricky thing is that safety razors come with a higher upfront cost, ranging anywhere from $15 to more than $200 depending on the brand. However, the refill blades are cheap, as low as 20 cents each, compared to $2 for the average modern cartridge.   You can familiarize yourself with established brands through long-time retailers like GroomingLounge.com and The Art of Shaving. Michael Gilman, founder of GroomingLounge.com, said safety razors are a small but fast-growing part of his business, with blade sales tripling in the past year. Beginners should go for the lower-priced razors and look for closed-comb design and weighted handles, he said.   If you are looking to try one out, however, most of the newer digital brands offer 30-day returns, regardless of whether the razor is used.  

Are there other eco-friendly options?

  Safety razors are not made for rushed morning routines. And frequent fliers be warned: you can’t throw the blades into your carry-on luggage. The Transportation Safety Administration wrote a blogpost about it after finding that “they’re making a comeback thanks to the close shave they provide and the extremely affordable price of the replacement blades.”   If it’s not for you, at least switching to a cartridge with a reusable handle reduces the waste. Already, that is the more popular option among U.S. men, according to Euromonitor figures, though women in the U.S. still spend more money on fully disposable plastic razors.

(FOX 2) - When a staff member approached Christopher Jacobs about recycling cigarette butts, he thought it was a dig at him. After all, the executive director of Ypsilanti’s Downtown Development Authority counts himself among the few that still partake. Instead, the supposed tongue-in-cheek comment was actually a recommendation that Jacobs thought fit the city’s progressive culture rather well. “We brought it before the board in August, reached out to businesses - almost all of the bars and restaurants said they struggle with cleaning up butts in front of their stores,” Jacobs said. “People seemed to be excited, so we said ‘let’s pilot the program’.” That program involves placing 12 recycling containers intended for cigarette butts at highly trafficked areas around the city. The simple gesture is good optics for the city, but it also represents a burgeoning trend among cities to engage best practices for business and environment. “I think we may be one of the first communities,” he said. “I don’t see it in many of the other communities. To divert that material from landfills and to produce something good from a bad habit - we really didn’t need to talk about it much (at city council). Everyone said ‘wow, that’s a great idea. It’s really cheap. It’s low-hanging fruit’.” As governments enact more restrictions on single-use plastics, environmentalists have turned their heads toward cigarette butts. The orange piece of paper and plastic might be minuscule, but the numbers behind them certainly aren’t. The Cigarette Butt Pollution Project reports that every year, 376 billion cigarettes are consumed in the U.S. alone. Worldwide, that number climbs into the trillions. Now imagine 65 percent of those cigarette butts getting tossed on streets, in rivers and every other crack of pavement they it can fit in. More than just an eyesore, those butts don’t biodegrade. They’re made of a polymer. As the waste has spread, the cigarette butt has been dubbed the “The most littered item in the world.” And with that acknowledgement comes a surging campaign to recycle the waste. “I love our mission, it’s the whole mission-driven eliminate-the-idea-of-waste goal,” said Lisa Pellegrino, the strategic partnerships manager and consumer engagement with TerraCycle. “It’s an anti-littering message that focuses on the toxic nature of waste.” TerraCycle isn't one of the new kids on the recycling block - but it's message of eliminating “the idea of waste,” rather than just the waste itself may be. The symbolic charge they hope generates material progress comes through in their cigarette butt campaign. They are focusing on the positive reinforcement of recycling cigarette butts, rather than using negative messages meant to shame smokers who discard their waste. Pellegrino said they have seen a reduction of nine to 12 percent of litter in the vicinity of their recycling containers. From there, the butts are processed or ‘pelletized’ and refit for other plastic products like ashtrays and shipping pallets. For Detroit and Grand Rapids, two Michigan cities that have used TerraCycle’s services, they have collected 60,750 and 1,219,728 butts respectively. But, officials remain skeptical to their effectiveness. “It all depends on whether people use them,” Jacobs said. “With conventional cigarette butt disposals, not everyone snuffs out their butts and puts them in there. Some communities might be skeptical. But with stories like these, TerraCycle might bring on a few more communities.”

Contributed by Hollie Lee, Department of Clinical Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine   Walmart founder, Sam Walton, said, “We’re all working together; that’s the secret.” Let me tell you about our little secret! At Auburn, we are making a difference in waste reduction at the Auburn University College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) by working together. The CVM has partnered with AU Waste Reduction and Recycling Department (WRRD), AU Risk Management and Safety (RMS), AU Office of Sustainability (OS), as well as our scientific supply vendor, VWR, to minimize our landfill waste. Our collaborative efforts are making a significant impact on waste reduction.   AU’s WRRD has a great program for taking care of our most recyclable products. At our desks, we have blue bins for mixed paper. In more common areas, we have receptacles for plastic containers, as well as aluminum and steel cans. Flattened cardboard is collected by our custodial contractors, ABM®. WRRD provides larger collection bins that are emptied periodically outside the buildings.   AU’s RMS and OS joined forces to provide battery recycling for the CVM. OS provides the receptacles for collection and RMS provides the management and pick up of recyclable batteries. Why wouldn’t we want batteries in our landfills? When batteries begin to degrade, the chemicals may leak into the ground which can lead to soil and water contamination. By recycling batteries, we are able to keep hazardous material from entering landfills as well as using the recycled materials to fabricate new products. Ultimately, we are conserving precious energy resources and the need to collect new, raw materials.   Our scientific supply vendor, VWR, recently began “From the Lab Bench to the Park Bench,” a pipet tip box recycling program. This program offers a convenient opportunity to recycle an abundant source of waste found in every laboratory. With this program, we are diverting hard-to-recycle plastic (typically #5) from the waste stream. This easy-to-use recycling program provides boxes for waste collection, shipment, and recycling for used pipet tip boxes. All brands of plastic pipet tip boxes are accepted. The plastic waste is ground, melted, and pelletized through extrusion by TerraCycle to create recycled resin. The resin is then combined with other recycled plastics to make park benches and other eco-friendly products.   This concerted effort between departments and vendors at AU is phenomenal! It couldn’t happen without essential personnel combining knowledge, enthusiasm, and collegiality for a common purpose. Reducing the amount of waste sent to landfills conserves our natural resources, prevents pollution, and ultimately saves energy.   How do the numbers stack up? TeamPounds of Recycled Materials (Jan-Jun 2019)   Waste Reduction and Recycling Department (all of AU)            670,976 Risk Management and Safety (CVM only)                                    100 VWR/TerraCycle (CVM only)                                                           455   The following team members made this happen:   Joan Hicken, AU Waste Reduction & Recycling Department Michael Freeman, AU Risk Management and Safety Cassandra Kitchens, AU Department of Pathobiology. CVM Hollie Lee, AU Department of Clinical Sciences, DVM Julie Woods, VWR Sales Representative for AU

• Walmart is hosting its first-ever car seat recycling program from September 16–30, 2019.
• Parents who drop off a car seat will receive a $30 gift card
• The program is done in partnership with TerraCycle, a company that works with typically hard-to-recycle items.

  The annoying thing about babies is that they just keep growing, which means that all of that gear you've bought for them eventually becomes unusable. This is especially true of car seats, which are hard to pass on to other families, since they fall under the category of baby gear that safety-minded organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommend getting new instead of used. (You never know if a used car seat is damaged or recalled, the AAP warns.) But a car seat is no good to anybody sitting in a garage — or a landfill.   Thankfully, Walmart is stepping in with its first-ever car seat recycling program. The event is taking place at 4,000 participating Walmart stores from September 16–30.Parents who drop off a car seat at the service desk during that time can feel good knowing that it'll be taken apart, and each little bit of it will be diverted from landfills. But even better news: Parents who drop off a car seat will receive a $30 gift card, which can be used either in-store or online for more baby items. (Perhaps a bigger car seat?) The caveats: They're not taking booster seats, and there's a limit of two gift cards per household. It's also worth checking to make sure your local Walmart is one of the participating stores before you go.   For this event, Walmart is teaming up with TerraCyle, a company that specializes in working with materials that are typically hard to recycle. “Through the Walmart Car Seat Recycling Program, traditionally non-recyclable car seats are now nationally recyclable,” Tom Szaky, TerraCycle's founder CEO, said in a statement. “Through this event, we expect to divert the plastic equivalent of approximately 35 million water bottles from landfills.”   If TerraCycle sounds vaguely familiar, it's because the company has been popping up all over the place in partnerships like these, from working with Hasbro on recycling toys to helping L.O.L. fans keep all its packaging out of landfills. Keep up the good, green work, TerraCycle!    

Has your toddler outgrown their current car seat? Is the seat you're currently using covered in juice stains and cracker crumbs? Are you finished using car seats with your kids and looking to purchase something else they need?   Walmart is gearing up to help with their car seat trade-in event, running from September 16 through 30 at more than 4,000 participating Walmart stores.   Parents who trade in a used car seat at their local Walmart will receive a $30 Walmart gift card to use on the purchase of a new car seat or other baby items. The traded seats will be recycled by TerraCycle, a waste management company that works with major retailers to find ways to recycle items that are challenging to dispose of and may otherwise be thrown into landfills.   This is the first car seat trade-in event held by Walmart, and is scheduled in conjunction with National Baby Safety Month.   "Safety — especially car seat safety — is a top priority for Walmart's baby department, so we wanted to use our size and scale to create an event that offered unprecedented access to trade in an outgrown car seat for a gift card — perfect for using on your baby’s next car seat," said Melody Richards, vice president of Walmart Baby. "Sustainability is of equal importance to Walmart, so we're happy to work with TerraCycle who will recycle every component of the car seats."   To take advantage of the deal, Walmart customers can bring their old car seats to the customer service desk of any participating Walmart and receive their gift card. Booster seats are not eligible for the trade-in, and there is a limit of two gift cards per household.

(FOX 2) - When a staff member approached Christopher Jacobs about recycling cigarette butts, he thought it was a dig at him. After all, the executive director of Ypsilanti’s Downtown Development Authority counts himself among the few that still partake.   Instead, the supposed tongue-in-cheek comment was actually a recommendation that Jacobs thought fit the city’s progressive culture rather well.   “We brought it before the board in August, reached out to businesses - almost all of the bars and restaurants said they struggle with cleaning up butts in front of their stores,” Jacobs said. “People seemed to be excited, so we said ‘let’s pilot the program’.”   That program involves placing 12 recycling containers intended for cigarette butts at highly trafficked areas around the city. The simple gesture is good optics for the city, but it also represents a burgeoning trend among cities to engage best practices for business and environment.   “I think we may be one of the first communities,” he said. “I don’t see it in many of the other communities. To divert that material from landfills and to produce something good from a bad habit - we really didn’t need to talk about it much (at city council). Everyone said ‘wow, that’s a great idea. It’s really cheap. It’s low-hanging fruit’.”   As governments enact more restrictions on single-use plastics, environmentalists have turned their heads toward cigarette butts. The orange piece of paper and plastic might be minuscule, but the numbers behind them certainly aren’t.   The Cigarette Butt Pollution Project reports that every year, 376 billion cigarettes are consumed in the U.S. alone. Worldwide, that number climbs into the trillions. Now imagine 65 percent of those cigarette butts getting tossed on streets, in rivers and every other crack of pavement they it can fit in.   More than just an eyesore, those butts don’t biodegrade. They’re made of a polymer. As the waste has spread, the cigarette butt has been dubbed the “The most littered item in the world.” And with that acknowledgement comes a surging campaign to recycle the waste.   “I love our mission, it’s the whole mission-driven eliminate-the-idea-of-waste goal,” said Lisa Pellegrino, the strategic partnerships manager and consumer engagement with TerraCycle. “It’s an anti-littering message that focuses on the toxic nature of waste.”   TerraCyle isn't one of the new kids on the recycling block - but it's message of eliminating “the idea of waste,” rather than just the waste itself may be. The symbolic charge they hope generates material progress comes through in their cigarette butt campaign.   They are focusing on the positive reinforcement of recycling cigarette butts, rather than using negative messages meant to shame smokers who discard their waste.   Pellegrino said they have seen a reduction of nine to 12 percent of litter in the vicinity of their recycling containers. From there, the butts are processed or ‘pelletized’ and refit for other plastic products like ashtrays and shipping pallets. For Detroit and Grand Rapids, two Michigan cities that have used TerraCycle’s services, they have collected 60,750 and 1,219,728 butts respectively.   But, officials remain skeptical to their effectiveness.   “It all depends on whether people use them,” Jacobs said. “With conventional cigarette butt disposals, not everyone snuffs out their butts and puts them in there. Some communities might be skeptical. But with stories like these, TerraCycle might bring on a few more communities.”  

Estudantes de Medicina mantêm projeto de extensão para recolha de esponjas no Campus

Pode jogar no lixo comum da casa ou são prejudiciais ao meio ambiente? Podem ser recicladas? A seguir explicaremos sobre as melhores formas de descarte de embalagens laminadas de café moído e café grão.

Walmart and TerraCycle are joining forces to launch the nation’s largest car seat recycling event in nearly 4,000 Walmart stores across the country.   The first-ever Walmart Car Seat Recycling Event will take place Sept. 16-30, in celebration of National Baby Safety Month. Customers can trade in used car seats at the Service desk in any participating Walmart store and receive a $30 Walmart gift card* that can be used in store or online to buy items for their baby. All car seats collected in this program will be recycled through TerraCycle, and each component will be diverted from the landfill.   “Safety – especially car seat safety – is a top priority for Walmart’s Baby department, so we wanted to use our size and scale to create an event that offered unprecedented access to trade in an outgrown car seat for a gift card – perfect for using on your baby’s next car seat,” said Melody Richards, vice president, Walmart Baby. “Sustainability is of equal importance to Walmart, so we’re happy to work with TerraCycle who will recycle every component of the car seats.”   “Through the Walmart Car Seat Recycling Program, traditionally non-recyclable car seats are now nationally recyclable,” said Tom Szaky, CEO and founder, TerraCycle. “We are proud to work with this forward-thinking company to offer families from coast-to-coast a way to give their car seat, the item that has kept their little ones safe, a second-life. Through this event, we expect to divert the plastic equivalent of approximately 35 million water bottles from landfills.”   To learn more about this event and others happening in Walmart’s Baby department throughout September, please visit www.walmart.com/AboutBestOfBabyMonth.   *Walmart $30 gift card offer with car seat trade in valid September 16, 2019 through September 30, 2019 at participating Walmart retail store locations. Not available at all Walmart Neighborhood Market locations. Limit of 2 gift cards per household. Booster seats not eligible for trade-in. Please see Customer Service desk for assistance with all car seat trade-ins. Gift cards subject to terms and conditions found at: https://help.walmart.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/57/~/gift-card-terms-and-conditions.