By Ollie & Gloria Maier
Daily Record Columnist

It’s always good to read about things that show the economy is improving. One such item was in the latest Recycling Today e-newsletter. 

“Raw steel production in the United States tallied 1.34 million net tons in the week ending Sept. 5, 2009, up 2.4 percent from the previous week.”

(And as you may know, a lot of recycled iron and steel goes into the production of new steel.)

 Switching to recycled plastics, the same e-newsletter reported on a plastics recycling company receiving an award.

“MBA Polymers, Richmond, Calif., has been named a Global Cleantech 100 company by Guardian News and Media and Cleantech Group LLC, a research, events and advisory services firm for environmentally-oriented manufacturers and companies.”

The neat thing about this company is they recycle plastics from a variety of products. “MBA Polymers recycles plastics generated from end-of-life durable goods such as computers, electronics, appliances and automobiles.”

The company’s technology “... uses mixed scrap as feedstock instead of petrochemicals and subsequently reduces the amount of energy required to manufacture the plastics by more than 90 percent compared to a typical virgin plastics plant.”

 And while still on the subject of plastics, another article mentioned, “Starting the first of next month plastic bottles, as well as oil filters and wooden pallets will be banned from disposal in landfills in North Carolina.”

It seems that, “At the present time the state of North Carolina recovers less than 20 percent of the plastic bottles generated in the state, despite large plastic processors located in the state. According to the state a main reason for the ban is to boost the recovery of bottles to meet the demand from the plastics processors.”

(That’s one way to get people to recycle more of them... And currently these plastics processors in North Carolina are only “operating at 69 percent capacity.”)

Locally, although we normally try to report each month the amount recycled at the Green Guy Recycling Services drop-off site the previous month, we missed July... so will give that today and will report the August amounts next week. As usual, scrap metals led the list.

Medals = 509,220 pounds

Cardboard = 220.480 pounds

Paper = 66,400 pounds

Glass = 62,589 pounds

Plastic = 14,415 pounds

A total of 518 gallons of waste oil and about 200 used oil filters were also recycled in July. Additionally, printer cartridges, vehicle batteries,

Styrofoam peanuts, and used clothing, were recycled there but no count is kept of these latter items.

(We say ‘Thank You’ to all of you concerned citizens who kept all this out of the landfill... Keep up the great work.)

Till next week, do have a great one... (and while we thanked the Man above for the wonderful rain we got last week, some of us could still use a lot more.)