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The recent changes in the way recyclable materials are accepted at the Polk County Transfer Station make it even more convenient for citizens who bring their recyclable materials to the facility on Crookston’s southern edge. For years, people who brought their materials to the Transfer Station had to put the materials in several separate receptacles: Aluminum cans in the aluminum container, glass in the glass container, cardboard in the cardboard container, plastic in the plastic container and newspapers in the newsprint container...you know how it all works.
Now, we can just dump everything into a single container, and let the recycling magic take over from there.
No, it’s not magic, but it does almost seem sometimes that there’s some kind of “Recycling Fairy” or some other divine entity that does all the hard work for those who make half-hearted attempts to recycle. Or, to put it another way, we’re kind of lazy sometimes. We have some aluminum cans mixed in with our glass, and maybe some of the containers still have a little syrupy, sticky liquid left in them. Maybe we dump some recyclables in containers at the Transfer Station that are labeled for something else, and we hope no one’s looking.
Seriously, are our efforts having a major impact? When we see words like “made from recycled paper” on various labels, have our efforts had something to do with that? Supposedly, yes. At least that’s what we’d like to think. Recycling is supposed to benefit our planet, but it’s also meant to make us feel good, too, like we’re making a little bit of difference.
And now the Transfer Station is making it easier. We’re all fairly familiar with the Transfer Station, of course, because most of us, after separating our materials and piling them into the city’s blue recycling bins, have to make a run to the station at least once before our monthly city curbside pickup because the blue city bins are too small and fill up too quickly, or we simply don’t have enough of them.
The changes on the back end don’t affect our front-end efforts much; we still have to separate our recyclables for city pickup. But when you really think about it, that’s the least we can do, because the real recycling work begins, and the resulting real impact is felt, after we’ve dropped off our recyclable materials, or they’ve been picked up.
The recent changes in the way recyclable materials are accepted at the Polk County Transfer Station make it even more convenient for citizens who bring their recyclable materials to the facility on Crookston’s southern edge. For years, people who brought their materials to the Transfer Station had to put the materials in several separate receptacles: Aluminum cans in the aluminum container, glass in the glass container, cardboard in the cardboard container, plastic in the plastic container and newspapers in the newsprint container...you know how it all works.
Now, we can just dump everything into a single container, and let the recycling magic take over from there.
No, it’s not magic, but it does almost seem sometimes that there’s some kind of “Recycling Fairy” or some other divine entity that does all the hard work for those who make half-hearted attempts to recycle. Or, to put it another way, we’re kind of lazy sometimes. We have some aluminum cans mixed in with our glass, and maybe some of the containers still have a little syrupy, sticky liquid left in them. Maybe we dump some recyclables in containers at the Transfer Station that are labeled for something else, and we hope no one’s looking.
Seriously, are our efforts having a major impact? When we see words like “made from recycled paper” on various labels, have our efforts had something to do with that? Supposedly, yes. At least that’s what we’d like to think. Recycling is supposed to benefit our planet, but it’s also meant to make us feel good, too, like we’re making a little bit of difference.
And now the Transfer Station is making it easier. We’re all fairly familiar with the Transfer Station, of course, because most of us, after separating our materials and piling them into the city’s blue recycling bins, have to make a run to the station at least once before our monthly city curbside pickup because the blue city bins are too small and fill up too quickly, or we simply don’t have enough of them.
The changes on the back end don’t affect our front-end efforts much; we still have to separate our recyclables for city pickup. But when you really think about it, that’s the least we can do, because the real recycling work begins, and the resulting real impact is felt, after we’ve dropped off our recyclable materials, or they’ve been picked up.
