Recycle

What company in your area is doing a great job recycling?

Recycle and Christmas. Do they go together?

Considering Christmas and the months leading up to the big day are some of the most productive shopping days of the year in terms of money being exchanged and goods being sold it is no surprise to think a lot of recyclables are being generated. Some easy ideas to implement are listed below and belive me, I am not going to tell you to slowly unwrap your presents and reuse/recycle the wrapping paper but this list should help you add some recycling to the Holiday season.
1.Use existing boxes before buying new ones to wrap presents.
2.Save and use existing unused wrapping paper form years past. If possible save the unused paper for next year.
3.Use items such as the backside of a junk mail for gift tags. Be creative as cutting a cereal box for a more sturdy tag is not outside the realm of creative thinking.
4.Do not feel bad about recycling a gift that you know will be used. A lot better than chucking it or letting it sit in your closet for years.
5. Recycle all of those gift bags, tissue paper, bows, and the like. It is so disappointing to see those huge black plastic bags outside of the house an hour after opening presents full of these packaging items you will need to buy again next year. Hello...Recycle them this year.

Bring in the Green

I see a lot of schools are doing project based recycling programs. Starting a specific program such as recycling plastic bags and ending the program after a certain time frame. Recycling needs to be a permanent part of the schools fabric and not an optional item to inject around Earth Day. Schools need to do the work up front and find a point person in the school to take responsibility and work with students to keep the recycling programs up and running. Please share any feedback on recycling programs your school or business has implemented and continued to keep up.

A Green Turkey?

You may have a hard time finding one but here are some other things you can do for Thanksgiving this year to add a little green to the big Turkey Dinner.
1. Make sure your produce is coming from local farms
2. Compost your produce scraps
3. Cut down on your use of paper towels and napkins.
4. Turn the TV off when you are eating. Sorry football fans.
5. Lower your thermostat while the bird is cooking...
6. Do not use one time use cups and plates. Come on break out the good stuff from the China Cabinet.
7. Recycle all those cans, bottles and other boxes you may generating for the big dinner.

You will not even notice a change to your Thanksgiving Day while you help cut down on your Carbon Footprint.......

How will the economy affect your local environment?

NYC is looking at implementing a bag tax or surcharge for plastic bags. That should eliminate some of the plastic traffic going into our landfills one would think. The talk is that this will get delayed or tabled until the economy recovers as the public is concerned about an additional cost in their daily routine. RedBank NJ recently had a bag ban tabled again. Could this be a growing trend of suspending green initiatives while we all wait for the economy to get on its feet again?

The question is will lower employment and less consumer confidence cause a temporary void in the "going green" movement?
Let me know what you think.

Just want to get the discussion going on “Green”. I think what I have seen on the Sundance Channel And NBC recently is a good sign about the progression of green in our society These networks and others have continued to make the environment an important topic in their programming. I believe that in order to make “Going Green” a habit as opposed to a trend or fad, "Green" needs to be systematically a part of our culture through events like this, PSA’s and programs like what I have started.
I started a company http://www.goriseup.com/ that implements recycling education programs and the habit forming behaviors into schools across the country. We create a lot of buzz with our assemblies by incorporating a movie theater size visual presentation, important contacts in the community, as well some of the alarming facts that relate to recycling. Our program instills a sense of ownership of the recycling cause for the newest generation of Americans. We also started 2 contests in NY and NJ. They can be found at http://www.greenupthegardenstate.com/
and http://www.greenupny.com/ respectively.

Anybody interested in our programs or the contest, feel free to email us at info@goriseup.com or call 732.320.8271