Recycling Services

Recycling is collecting and processing materials that otherwise would be thrown away as trash and turning them into new products. If done efficiently, recycling can benefit your community, the economy, and the environment.

The costs and benefits of recycling, particularly for plastics, have been examined for years. It comes down to how much it costs to collect, transport, sort, break down, and reform into new products. It also involves the supply and demand of plastic materials. When viewing the benefit of plastic recycling, simply based on cost, it is typically less expensive for a petrochemical company to make virgin plastic from oil than to use recycled material to create products.

However, recycling metal and glass has routinely proven to be cost-effective. Aluminum can be recycled indefinitely and takes as much as 95% less energy to produce products than virgin material. Glass is highly recyclable in a way that doesn’t lose quality each time it’s broken down.

EPA data shows that recycling conserves energy and natural resources. For example:

• Recycling one ton of office paper can save the equivalent of consuming 322 gallons of gasoline.
• Recycling just one ton of aluminum cans conserves more than 152 million Btu, the equivalent of 1,024 gallons of gasoline or 21 barrels of oil.
• According to our most recent report, plastic bottles are the most recycled in the US as of 2018. Recycling 10 plastic bottles saves enough energy to power a laptop for over 25 hours.

Recycling can reduce your operating costs. By your organization, generating less trash it will translate into less costly waste disposal dumpsters. Additionally, recycling enhances your company’s image. Implementing a program in your office can be easy and will likely reduce your bottom line.

When we make new products out of virgin materials, we expend energy to extract and process those materials. This includes burning fossil fuels. However, if we manufacture products using recycled materials, we reduce the need for virgin materials and save the energy required to extract and process them.

EPA has developed the individual Waste Reduction Model (iWARM) tool to estimate how much energy you can save by recycling certain products. This tool calculates how much energy you save by recycling aluminum cans, glass or plastic bottles, magazines, or grocery bags. It shows you how long those savings could power different electrical appliances.

Is recycling the best management option? What other options are there? The most effective way to reduce waste, and the most environmentally preferred strategy, is to avoid creating it in the first place. Source reduction, along with material reuse, are the most functional ways to save natural resources, protect the environment, and save money. Making a new product requires a lot of materials and energy, from extracting raw materials to fabricating the product to transporting it to the place of purchase. Check out EPA tips for reducing reusing, and donation.

Please contact your local county or municipality to determine your local recycling options. Additionally, please check out the I Want To Be Recycled website for more information.

Putting items that can’t be recycled in the recycling bin can contaminate the recycling stream. After these unrecyclable items arrive at recycling centers, they can cause costly damage to the equipment. Additionally, after arriving at recycling centers, they must be sorted out and then sent to landfills, which raises costs for the facility. That is why checking with the ECO Waste Disposal & Container Storage service team will provide you with the information needed to ensure we can accept certain items before placing them into a bin.

How greasy and cheesy is the cardboard? You can recycle it if it’s only lightly soiled or in excellent condition. Sopping with grease? Toss it in the garbage. Consider cutting or ripping off the dirty part and recycling the rest. Pizza boxes are cardboard, a highly sought-after material that can be recycled into new products.

Furthermore, some recycling providers require different types of materials to be collected in separate bins (multi-stream recycling). In contrast, other providers may accept various materials that are put together in the same bin (single-stream recycling). We at ECO Waste Disposal & Container Storage Company can structure your organization’s single-stream or multi-stream program.

Your local recycling facility might only accept some recyclable items. This is especially true with plastics. While plastic bottles are the most commonly recycled plastic products, other plastics may or may not be accepted in your area, so check what your local recycling provider accepts. It is essential to understand that a plastic resin code on the product does not guarantee that it is recyclable at your local recycling center. Also, some areas may not accept glass, so please confirm with your local provider.

Single-stream recycling is accessible to the consumer. Everything gets put into one recycling bin that gets emptied. The mixed materials take longer to sort and cost more money at the recycling center. It often results in contamination, resulting in lower prices for the material.

On the other hand, clean-stream recycling requires more effort from the consumer. In this method, recyclables are separated based on the material. Each material has its bin, and the program can be customized. The materials are then taken to a facility where they are already sorted. That means the process is quicker, it costs less money, and the materials retain more of their value.

Before starting your recycling program, the customer service representative of ECO Waste Disposal & Container Storage Company will need to be informed regarding which program your firm will want to initiate.