Archive for the ‘Recycling’ Category

B Green Services supports Elemental Impact and their creation of Zero Waste Zones and soil rejuvenation and composting projects

Friday, May 14th, 2010

B Green Services is proud to announce our support and affiliation with Elemental Impact, a new Atlanta environmental organization founded by Holly Elmore, formerly of Green Foodservice Alliance. Elemental Impact’s goal consist of the following:

  • The creation of Zero Waste Zones around Atlanta (to create green work environments and sustainable business practices by reduce the amount of trash going to landfills through recycling and composting; and to conserve energy)
  • Implementing soil rejuvenation projects for the growth of local food in healthy, sustainable soils
  • Implementing the use of organic matter to compost and create energy (known as POWER: Perishable Organics Waste-to-Energy Recycling)

You can find out more about Elemental Impact on their website, www.ElementalImpact.org, and if you’re interested in moving your business towards a Zero Waste Zone model, please email or call B Green Services and let’s talk about how we can help your company recycle and cut down on your waste!

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A word about biodegradable plastics made from corn, or PLA

Monday, April 19th, 2010

As you go out to eat or take a quick pass through the drive through, you may notice the rise of compostable, plastic cups. These plastics to go cups are made from corn and meant to biodegrade back into the ground instead of permeating our landfills with their lingering existence.

Here are some details on compostable containers :

  • Corn plastics are made from (beginning to end) carbon dioxide and water > cornstarch > dextrose (which is then fermented) > lactic acid > polylactide (PLA).
  • Unlike regular plastics, which are made from oil, corn plastics are 100% biodegradable and compostable. And since corn is renewable, it is a more sustainable source than regular petroleum-based plastic.
  • It can take up to 45 days or so for items to biodegrade in a commercial composting facility and a little longer in a home bin. In a landfill, PLA items will react as if they were food, although landfills aren’t designed for biodegrading (and apparently, in a home composting bin, they can take a much lengthier amount of time).
  • PLA products are also becoming more competitively priced with traditional plastics (PET) than they have been in the past, making it a more viable option for businesses looking for green, earth-friendly products.

We’re happy to say that we find compostable containers in some of the restaurant clients of B Green Services and we thank them for their environmental effort!

Many sources contain information on PLA and compostable containers – the above info is courtesy of Biodegradable Store (where you can also buy PLA products).

Here’s how to sign up for residential recycling curbside services in DeKalb County!

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

Whether you’ve just moved to Atlanta or have lived here a while and are making the environmentally-friendly switch to recycling, it’s easy to get your residential recycling services started in DeKalb County! DeKalb County’s comprehensive recycling program is available for residents of unincorporated DeKalb and the cities of Lithonia and Dunwoody (all residents who receive solid waste services from DeKalb’s Sanitation Division).

The cost to subscribe to curbside services is $30 total, with $15 going towards the rental of the blue paper bin from the county and $15 going towards 100 big blue bags for co-mingled recycling. DeKalb County’s Sanitation Division handles the program and you can get the full details on signing up on their website here. This fee is good indefinitely – you just pay $15 for another set of 100 bags when you run out of them.

What can be recycled?
The sanitation Division has an extensive list on their website of what can and cannot be recycled. Here is an overview:

  • All grades of paper (newspaper, phone books, magazines, office paper, cardboard, junk mail)
  • All glass beverage bottles
  • All plastic containers with recycle symbols 1 through 7 (no containers or plastics with food residue or motor oil, petroleum products, etc.)
  • All steel, tin, and aluminum cans

When does the curbside recycling get picked up?
DeKalb picks up the recycling in the blue bins and big blue bags every Wednesday, however, you will want to consult the holiday calendar online for adjusted schedules due to federal holidays.

Why recycle anyway?
Recycling reduces the amount of waste in our rapidly-filling landfills and preserves the natural resources used to make products by reusing existing materials. This leads to a cleaner environment and a better future for generations to come.

A few quick recycling facts…

  • Residential waste (household trash) accounts for approximately 56% of all of the types of waste that goes to DeKalb County’s Seminole Landfill.
  • According to the Environmental Protection Agency, in 2006, U.S. residents, businesses and institutions produced more than 251 million tons of trash, which is approximately 4.6 pounds of waste per person every single day.
  • Aluminum cans are unique because they can recycled forever, and the can that you recycle today can be turned into a new can and be back on the shelves in 60 days!
  • According to the Aluminum Association, in 2003, 4 billion aluminum cans were recycled, saving the energy equivalent of 15 million barrels of crude oil – which is roughly America’s entire gas consumption for one day!
  • On November 15, 2007, the first “America Recycles Day” was celebrated in thousands of communities nationwide.

Additional recycling resources
You can also find additional recycling drop-off points throughout DeKalb County. All fire stations have mixed paper recycling as do most county public buildings -  get the full list of locations here! You can also check www.earth911.com for specific recycling drop-off locations for items that may not be accepted by DeKalb County (for instance, you can recycle incandescent lightbulbs at Home Depots throughout the area, you can recycle batteries at certain locations, etc.). You will always want to check on where to get rid of car motor oil and other petroleum products as those call for special disposal.

Happy recycling!

Don’t throw away that plastic water bottle! Recycling even one plastic bottle can have a profound impact

Sunday, January 17th, 2010

It’s all-too-easy to pick up a quick plastic water bottle at the grocery store or gas station, and it’s even easier to think, “oh, it’s just one bottle – how much difference can one bottle really make?” The good people at Online Education put together an infographic to illustrate the facts about bottled water and address that very question.

Here, you can see the true impact of plastic water bottles on the environment – from the creation of the bottles themselves, to the tap water used to fill many of them up, to the consequences of only recycling 1 in 5 water bottles.

Luckily, this is one of the easiest things to fix - by not buying bottled water and by encouraging others to recycle theirs (sometimes you have to help a friend out and just recycle it for them, too)!

Is the environmental impact of plastic water bottles and recycling really all that bad? This chart tells the story.

Think your one water bottle can't make an environmental impact? Think again, as this chart counts the ways that plastic water bottles are damaging in too many ways.

Happy New Year from B Green Services! Now, where to recycle your Christmas tree in Atlanta?

Saturday, January 2nd, 2010

We at B Green Services would like to take a moment to wish all of you a very happy new year and hope that everyone has had a wonderful and safe holiday season! (And hope that everyone recycled as much as possible. :-) ) We look forward to great success in 2010, both as the recycling movement continues to expand and our opportunities grow to help businesses with their recycling needs. We especially appreciate our current customers and look forward to another productive year!

If you’re looking for a place to recycle your Christmas tree this year, you can donate your tree to a good cause at Keep Atlanta Beautiful’s annual “Bring One for the Chipper” program. All Christmas trees will be recycled into mulch – here’s more info from Keep Atlanta Beautiful’s website:

The mulch from these trees has been used for playgrounds, local government beautification projects, and residential yards. The high quality, weed-free and pest-free mulch can be obtained for your large-scale landscaping project free of charge. Contact Davey Tree Service at 770-451-7911 for more information or download the Mulch Request Form.

You can drop off your tree on Saturday, January 9th, 2010 between 9 am and 4 pm at one of two Home Depots:

Yours can be one of thousands of trees transformed into mulch! Please encourage others to recycle their Christmas trees as well and keep this prime organic matter out of landfills and in a much more useful capacity – protecting other trees, plants, and land.

How does recycling make a difference? Take a look at the environmental and economic impact

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

For individuals, recycling is a fairly simple, and yet critical, step to lessening our environmental impact. The person that tosses their plastic water bottle in the trash doesn’t necessarily realize, though, how that action goes beyond just taking up more landfill space. To truly understand the consequences of not recycling, one must look at the whole life cycle of that plastic water bottle, from the carbon it takes to manufacture new product versus the emissions from the recycling trucks that come around to collect the recyclable materials.

Here are a few statistics on the energy efficiency of recycling:

  • Aluminum requires 96 percent less energy to make from recycled cans than it does to process from bauxite.
  • Recycled glass uses about 21 percent less energy (and the numbers show that still beats creating a new product).
  • Recycled plastic bottles use 76 percent less energy.
  • Newsprint uses about 45 percent less energy.
  • It takes 10.4 million Btu to manufacture products from a ton of recyclables, compared to 23.3 million Btu for virgin materials. And all of the collecting, hauling and processing of those recyclables adds just 0.9 million Btu.

These statistics make a strong case for recycling and, chances are, the numbers will only get better over time as pick-up and single stream operations become more efficient, among other factors. We pulled these numbers from an article in Popular Mechanics that ran last year which I would suggest people take a quick moment to read by clicking here. The emerging technology of single stream recycling dates the article a bit as we have been actively utilizing a single stream for quite some time in metro Atlanta.

How do we improve recycling rates even more, especially here in the south? What about a “pay as you throw” policy where residents pay according to the size of their trash can and amount of waste generated? Atlanta’s and Decatur’s single stream, curbside residential recycling programs have helped improve rates, but as you go further from the metro area, the pick-up services dwindle and with them goes the motivation to haul one’s own recycling to the nearest sorting facility. So thank you to everyone who makes that extra effort!

If you decide after reading this article that it’s time to do something about recycling at your work or in your condo or townhome community in the metro Atlanta area, please don’t hesistate to contact us, B Green Services, at 404.660.1392 or emil@bgreenservices.com. We’re passionate about recycling and specialize in developing custom recycling plans for hospitality, residential, and corporate recycling!

Wish your Atlanta condo or apartment complex recycled? So does B Green Services – and we can help!

Sunday, December 6th, 2009

If you don't get residential curbside recycling service to your condo or apartment, there are options!

Surprisingly, many of Atlanta’s condo communities and apartment complexes do not offer recycling services. The City of Atlanta curbside recycling and DeKalb County do a great job of picking up from single-family residential homes, but skip over dense portions of our neighbors. Are you frustrated by the lack of recycling in your community? Tired of saving your recycling to run it up to the DeKalb Farmer’s Market or Emory or your local recycling facility?

B Green Services can help! Right now, we’re working with a townhome community in the Druid Hills neighborhood near Emory University to help them with their recycling needs. The homeowners environmental conscious was weighing heavy when they were introduced to Emil, the brains behind B Green Services. The homeowners association got together and elected to use B Green for single stream recycling and now have big herbie curbie recycling containers and a weekly pick-up from Emil. The HOA at this complex is working on taking their green desires even further, with hopes for solar panels and rain water collection barrels in the future. We’re happy to be partnered with folks of a similar mindset!

If you would like to explore your recycling options, please give Emil of B Green Services a call at 404.660.1392 or email him at emil@bgreenservices.com! Let’s see what we can do to turn recycling in Atlanta around!

Recycling Customer Spotlight: Souper Jenny! Making the world greener one home cooked meal at a time.

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Most of B Green Services’ customers recycle for a few main reasons – to save money on waste, because it’s mandatory for the organization or because they’re seeking a green certification.  The people at Souper Jenny do it because they care.  The staff is truly passionate about ensuring that the recycling effort is comprehensive and that its materials are clean and organized.  They make the extra effort and ask us about ways to improve the process.  Though their operation is small, their execution ensures that all of the recyclable materials they use are recovered.

The care they put into recycling may be surpassed only by the effort they put into their food.  Check out their amazing soups, sandwiches and salads.  Their menu changes daily, so go online to get your taste buds watering (www.SouperJennyATL.com).

Thanks, Souper Jenny, for being a super recycling partner! If you’re interested in recycling for your business, please contact us!

Thanks to Souper Jenny for being a super recycling partner and keeping trash out of the landfill!

2009 Silver Comet Half-Marathon goes eco-friendly with B Green Services recycling!

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Up top is our early start at 5 a.m. on race day, setting up recycling bins to go along the half-marathon course; <br><br>next is Emil and Jenny loading up the back of the truck with a portion of the race recycling; <br><br> next is our B Green crew with Emil, Angela, Jenny, and Zack (Jenny's dad was out, too, taking the photo!); <br><br> and at the bottom is just some of the recyclable material we saved from going into a landfill!

We at B Green Services is excited for last weekend’s successful race recycling venture with the Silver Comet Half-Marathon! As the skies opened up at the start of the race, we had volunteers lining the course at each water stop, preparing to recycling runners’ paper cups, plastic water bottles, and any other recyclable materials we could get our hands on. Logistically, everything went extremely smoothly! Of course, the finish line was the busiest spot and had the highest likelihood of contamination due to all of the food and general trash. However, we still managed to save mounds of waste from going to a landfill and instead diverted it to a materials processing facility!!

In addition to creating an environmentally-friendly Atlanta road race, we also took strides towards going green as a company. We printed our B Green Services t-shirts on “recycled” plain tees from thrift stores and printed our race flyers for the goodie bags on reused cardboard boxes. We look forward to recycling at many more road races and hope to grow our special events list in the future! Are you or someone you know interested in volunteering ti recycle at events around Atlanta? Do you know of someone that you use an eco-friendly hand to recycle for their event? We’d love to help! Just leave a comment below or contact us through our website!

My Candy Crisis – Why aren’t candy wrappers recyclable?

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

My office loves any excuse to have food around, and Halloween is no exception.  Those little bite-size candies are a constant tempation every time I walk past through the lobby or by any of the other strategically-placed candy dishes.  Just imagine my chagrin when I discovered that all the little candy wrappers that coat each and every bite-sized piece are NOT recyclable.  Now I not only suffer from the guilt of eating the calories in the two or three (ok, eight or ten) bites of bliss each day, but now I know that I can’t even recycle the mounds of plastic that pile up on my desk each day as evidence of my sweet tooth and lack of willpower.  So I’ve resolved to make a change.  I’ll stick to the Dots  – those little sweet gummy candies that come in little, recyclable cardboard boxes.

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