Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Are you Blue?


Wondering what you can do about climate change? Here’s an idea;

DeKalb County Sanitation runs a recycling program that retrieves your paper, cans, glass and plastics in one easy chore. Sign up for a blue bin and bags and every Wednesday, DeKalb trucks will pick up your recyclables at your curb.

Why recycle? If we recycled just 1.7 million tons of the millions of tons of aluminum, paper, glass and plastic thrown away annually in Georgia we would,

*Conserve 4% of the total energy consumed in a year within our state which equals the transportation energy consumed by over one million Georgians annually.

*Conserve over 7 million barrels of oil! (Stats from Ga. Recycling Coalition)

DeKalb County Recycling trucks go directly to SP Recycling in Forest Park for the load to be processed and sent on to be used in remanufacturing.

Neighbor is telling neighbor. Some streets in Dunwoody North have no blue bins at the curb yet Stonington Drive, a two block street, sports 10 blue bins on recycling day. Congratulations, Stonington Drive!

If you recycle, won’t you please tell your neighbors about your experience; how it saves you gas, time and energy and gives you that “feel good” feeling about doing your part?

Recycling in DeKalb involves just a one-time fee, $15 for use of the blue bin. It also costs $15 for a supply of blue bags that last for years and there is no service fee ever. That’s it! That’s what DeKalb Sanitation must charge because by law, the program has to be self-sustaining.

For more information about recycling at home and at school call DeKalb Sanitation, Sheri Arnold, Recycling Coordinator at 404-294-2900 or e-mail: Sanitation@co.dekalb.ga.us or look up the website: www.co.dekalb.ga.us/publicwrks/sanitation.htm.

Thanks,

Bobbi Sedam (bobbi12@gmail.com)

5 comments:

  1. Great post! Also, the Dekalb County School System is curently pilot-testing its Go Green initiative (a comprehensive plan that touches all aspects of operations and is expected to conserve resources, improve the health of the environment, and save money) at 50 Dekalb County schools in our community. If your kids are coming home talking about recycling and you don't already participate at home, it might be because they are now recycling at school.

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  2. Will the new city be keeping the sanitation services of DeKalb County? I hope so because they are terrific. But if it's questionable, it might be worth waiting until we know for sure before spending $30 to start recycling.

    Kirsten

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  3. Kirsten: By the way, I have asked Dekalb County Sanitation several times what is the number of residences in Dunwoody that participate in curbside recycling. I just wanted a baseline so we could measure how much participation grows as time goes by, and also perhaps to see how we compare to other cities.

    I thought this would be an easy question, yet you can't believe the runaround I'm getting and how long it is taking for an answer. :(

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  4. P.S. And my comment above was supposed to say that "several of which are in our community" (not all 50 schools!)

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  5. Okay, I just got the number--there are currently 2,456 residences participating in curbside recycling in Dunwoody.

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