FOF: America Recycles Day!

On Friday, November 14, volunteers and staff of the Prince William County Solid Waste Division Recycling Program will be at the Chinn Park Library and the Bull Run Library from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. There will be recycling education activities and prizes. Additionally, library patrons can “Take the Pledge” and enter a drawing to win a local, regional and national prizes. Prizes include: Local- T-shirt; Washington DC region prizes – $300 REI gift card and $500 grant to a local school’s K-12 environmental program; National prize – park bench made of recycled material. Learn more at americarecyclesday.org.

“Every year in October we host a large recycling education event at the Prince William County landfill in honor of America Recycles Day, so we also like to host these smaller events closer to November 15 to continue to keep theimportance of recycling and buying recycled products message on everybody’s mind, “said Deborah Campbell, Communications Specialist for the Solid Waste Division.  Prince William area residents can sign the recycling pledge at the library, or visit pwcgov.org/trashandrecycling and take the pledge on line.

“Last year, a Prince William area entrant won one of the park benches from the National contest and a Prince William entrant won the regional prize too,” Campbell stated. “Keep America Beautiful’s America Recycles Day is one day to educate and motivate individuals to recycle more. Recyclable items we use every day, like that cereal box and milk jug in the morning- are recoverable resources that can be manufactured into new and valuable products,” said Brenda Pulley, senior vice president of recycling at Keep America Beautiful. “Together, we can reduce the billions of dollars’ worthof material thrown away each year and work to give that “garbage” another life through recycling.”

For more information about recycling in Prince William County, visit www.pwcgov.org/recycling.

America’s leading companies are proud to make America Recycles Day possible. National sponsors of America Recycles Day are: Amcor, America Chemistry Council, the Johnson & Johnson Family of Consumer Companies, Pilot Pen, and Waste Management. About America Recycles Day America Recycles DaySM is a national program of Keep America Beautiful, and is the only nationally recognized day and community-driven awareness event dedicated to promoting and celebrating recycling in the U.S.

Since its inception in 1997,communities across the country have participated in America Recycles Day on November 15 to educate, promote environmental citizenship, and encourage action. Learn more at AmericaRecyclesDay.org.

About Keep America Beautiful Keep America Beautiful is the nation’s leading nonprofit that brings people together to build and sustain vibrant communities. With a national network of community-based affiliates, we work with millions of volunteers who take action intheir communities to transform public spaces into beautiful places. Through our programs and public-private partnerships, we engage individuals to take greater responsibility for improving their community’s environment. For more information, visit kab.org, follow @kabtweet on Twitter and like us on facebook.com/keepamericabeautiful.

Guest Post: 8 Easy Steps to Save Money, Help the Environment and Our Community

8 Easy Steps to Save Money, Help the Environment and Our Community

Being green is a big buzzword these days. Everyone has heard of being eco-friendly and helping to reduce the environmental footprint, but many don’t know what they can do, or think their one contribution won’t make much of a dent.

At home, you can help protect the environment in so many ways. Every small step helps our community to become cleaner and helps make an impact on the environment. 

Everyone can do their part by practicing the 3 R’s: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

We can all make some changes in our home that are easy and save us money! Here are some tips that are easy to do:

• ·      Reuse and recycle what you already have! You can save tons of money on storage containers by reusing glass and plastic food containers when they are empty.
• ·      Participate in recycling programs, such as recycling cans, plastic, glass and paper products.
• ·      Use bio-degradable trash bags that are made of corn and dissolve over time, adding less plastic to our landfills.
• ·      Save water and energy by avoiding using permanent press cycle when doing laundry, which uses an added 5 gallons for the extra rinse. Wash laundry in cold water, since 80-90% of the machines energy is used to heat the water. I promise your clothes will be clean!
• ·      Avoid washing your car in your driveway.  Who has the time anyhow! Few people realize that washing our cars in our driveways is one of the most environmentally unfriendly things we can do. The average home driveway car wash uses 140 gallons of water, whereas an environmentally friendly car wash uses just 30 gallons and recycles water in a controlled water management system. And the soap chemicals run off your car and go straight into our storm drains which eventually get into our river, streams, creeks and bays where it poisons aquatic life and wreaks other ecosystem havoc.
• ·      Use non-toxic cleaners in your home. There are many natural cleaners on the market these days that you can buy.
• ·      You can also make great environmentally safe cleaners out of regular household items. The acid in white vinegar makes it naturally capable of killing mold and bacteria, and you can use it to clean mirrors and windows. Baking soda is great for deodorizing, especially with all that sports equipment from your kids.  Lemon juice is another bacteria killer and is a multi-purpose cleaner that’s useful for scrubbing walls and floors.
• ·      Turn off Lights: I know this sounds incredibly easy and almost silly, but turning off the lights when you are not using them, as well as putting your computers, TV’s, etc on a power strip and turning them off nightly, saves tons of money and energy.  Electronics use a huge amount of energy, so turning them off helps reduce our energy consumption.

Not only will this help reduce the environmental footprint, but can also rid your home of the toxins that can cause major health problems from continuous exposure or even small amounts of exposure over time.

You can also help teach your children about being good to our earth by making small changes in your home which are easy, more economical, and SMART!

This post is brought to you by Suzanne Behrens, owner of The Smart Car Wash in Woodbridge.  Suzanne is a mother of 3, local business owner, and someone who cares about keeping our community clean.  You can reach her at sbehrens@thesmartcarwash.com .