I found this really cool website last night.
Recyclingcenters.org
Not only does it let you enter in your zip code and show you a really cool google map with all of the recycling locations near you, it is LOADED with great info. 
Check it out. You can even find recycling centers that handle the hard to recycle items.
I found some cool photos in the Clean My City Flickr Group the other day and it sparked my interest enough to email the flickr member and ask her if she would mind sharing with us what she does to help our environment.
Here is a photo and below is what she had to say.
Theskywatcher
"I'm an environmental scientist, more specifically a hydro-geologist. I monitor groundwater and soil quality by taking samples, analyzing them, and write reports for the department of environmental conservation. My consultant company works only with gas stations, or sites that were previously gas stations. We're specifically looking for contaminants that are traceable to gasoline in the groundwater and soil.
These contaminants get into the ground via cracks in the gas tanks or pump piping and are deemed 'spills', and can be in the water and soil for years. We monitor most 'active spill' sites on a quarterly bases, as most of them show decreasing levels over time. Though if there's a problem at a site, with increasing levels, we are frequently there assessing clean-up and installing systems to help alleviate the contamination in the ground. for this, we work with environmental drillers to install monitoring wells on these sites and off-site in the direction of the groundwater flow to ensure that the contamination isn't moving any further.
That's about the gist of it.. Hopefully I've been able to provide a few interest points amongst the boring geeky details. I'd be glad to answer any questions you have if you need more info."
Cool stuff from cool people, Just sharing photos and ideas about what we do to impact our environment. Have a great weekend everyone.
Today was recycling day for me. Two large overflowing bags of plastics. And one huge bag of shredded paper and cardboard. In the time that it took to generate these three bags for recycling I only put two bags of garbage out.
Update on my office. The 8 yard container is in place. 12 mini blue recycling bins are all around the office, see last post, and everyone is participating. It was slow at first because a lot of my coworkers have never recycled before. It became natural once they realized that its no more work to put paper in one bin and garbage in the other. It actually worked so well that our office over filled the container outside and we had to call the recycling company to come make a special pick up. * Which is partly just a nice way to say that we had a few bumps with the removal company, but those are all worked out now. The best part about this recycling is that our office was able to go with a smaller sized garbage dumpster, which has cut our waste removal fees dramatically. Which of course makes management happy. This has been a win win situation for everyone. I encourage anyone reading this post to set up recycling at your place of work. On average 43 percent of household garbage is a paper product that can be recycled and as much as 93% of all office waste is paper! Most of this is recyclable. Imagine if every office building had a recycling program. We need to start thinking how to be more efficient with what we do. Cites all over the planet are starting to implement recycling programs for their administration departments. Lets get the corporate world involved. The easiest way to do this is to show them that it saves money to recycle. I am going to keep track and let every one know how much our offices saves in waste removal fees. Maybe this will help to motivate others to join in.
Clean My City is doing well, this month is only half way through and the site has already had more visitors than in April, which was a high traffic month.
Keep it clean.
"new york city becomes grayer to me as the years go on" theskywatcher
Today I went and picked up 12 of these from Office Depot. I took them to my office and put them in everyones offices and in all the meeting rooms. I paid for this out of my own pocket because I want everyone at work to take full advantage of the 8 Yard container that a local company is suppling us for free. I have wrote about this before, but the short of the story is, I found a local company that recycles paper to make insulation material for homes. They are willing to supply us with a container and pick it up every week. This is great because all the waste disposal companies in town want to charge us money to recycle and this local company has agreed to do all of this for free.
Cool stuff. I will be updating my companies website soon to include a We Recycle link.
Feel free to share with us your recycling stories.
I didn't have enough scrap paper to create the scratch pads, so I "scrapped" that idea - at least for now. I also needed to forego the bamboo item. Maybe next year.
So, on this Earth Day, I thought I'd share with you a couple links:
