Register Now for Recycle-Bowl Competition!

CAPCO is continuing its partnership with Keep America Beautiful as a sponsor for the Recycle-Bowl.  The first 1,000 schools to register will receive a tool kit that includes information about how to recycle aerosol cans, an educational Material Recovery Facility poster, competition posters, a “recycling coach’s” clipboard and other materials.  Schools are encouraged to register as soon as possible.

How Does Recycle-Bowl Work?

Recycle-Bowl was created to provide students with a fun, interactive way to learn about waste reduction and environmental responsibility through in-school recycling. All schools can participate in the incentive-based recycling competition, which kicks off in October.  But registration is now open on the Recycle-Bowl website at http://recycle-bowl.org. The competition runs from October 21 through November 15, culminating on America Recycles Day. Participating schools will track and report how much recyclable material (bottles, cans, cartons and paper) they collect for a chance to win prizes. At the close of the four-week competition, the school in each state that collects the most recyclable material per capita will win $1,000. A national champion will then be chosen from among the statewide winners to receive an additional grand prize.

Help us reach our goal of having 1,700 schools participate in 2013!

The Recycle-Bowl Competition began in 2011 and by its second year, more than 1,500 schools, representing more than 900,000 students, participated in the competition. Want to know how many schools in your state are currently competing? You can find a state leaderboard on the website and an interactive map showing all the competing schools.

CAPCO reminds teachers and consumers that aerosol products are recyclable when empty.  Many programs already include empty aerosol containers into their curbside recycling programs, but CAPCO is working to get more local municipalities to include them and also to increase awareness among consumers that they can be recycled.  Please visit www.AerosolProducts.org/recycling for more information.

Recycling of Empty Aerosol Products Rises: Work to Increase Awareness Continues

A recent study done for the British Aerosol Manufacturers’ Association (BAMA) showed that in the UK nearly 70% of the population buy/use aerosols and 73% of those are recycling.  In the UK 87% of municipalities accept empty aerosol containers for recycling, this is up dramatically from only 7% accepting them less than two decades ago!

Similarly, the number of municipalities that accept empty aerosol containers in the U.S. is increasing as well.  In a recent webinar sponsored by Keep America Beautiful, Consumer Aerosol Products Council (CAPCO) shared that more than four billion aerosol cans are produced in the U.S. annually and more than 5,200 municipalities include steel aerosol cans in their recycling programs, serving more than 100 million people according to the Steel Recycling Institute (more than 75% of aerosols are steel).

Fortunately, large cities such as New York City and San Francisco have included empty aerosol cans in their curbside programs for years. But there is still work to be done to increase awareness among consumers. It is important for consumers and municipalities to understand that empty aerosol cans are recyclable to increase participation in recycling efforts. The good news is that both steel and aluminum are infinitely recyclable and valuable, so the case for recycling them is strong.

 

For example, steel food cans are currently accepted in 18,239 recycling programs already.  If all those programs also included empty steel aerosol cans, 193 million people would be served—that’s about 2/3 of the U.S. population!

   

CAPCO is an educational non-profit focused on providing the facts about today’s aerosol products, including their recyclability.  To learn more, please visit www.aerosolproducts.org/recycling.

Recycling…Just One More Way We All Can Help Keep America Beautiful!

One of the easiest ways to contribute to a more beautiful America is by recycling. Many empty and discarded items can be recycled and aerosol product cans are included among them. Recently, CAPCO partnered with one of the nation’s largest volunteer-based community action and education organizations – Keep America Beautiful, Inc. (KAB).

Through our partnership, CAPCO is supporting KAB’s new initiative “Recycle-Bowl” – a recycling competition for K-12 classrooms with the ultimate goal of increasing recycling rates and furthering education about recycling within U.S. schools. As a co-sponsor of the Recycle-Bowl Toolkit, CAPCO provided an aerosol can recycling fact sheet and classroom activity that is included in the kit. Other materials within the toolkit include Recycle-Bowl competition posters, environmentally friendly lesson plans for teachers, a complimentary book for students to read, and more.

Participation in Recycle-Bowl is easy and registration is open now. So visit the KAB website today and register your classroom for Recycle-Bowl. Only the first 1000 schools to register will receive a Recycle-Bowl toolkit. Registration closes on Tuesday, October 9, 2012, and the competition gets underway from October 15 through November 9, 2012. Winning schools will receive a monetary award ranging between $500 and $2,500.

Just remember…there are many ways we can keep America beautiful through recycling, but there is only one KAB Recycle-Bowl. Will you join CAPCO in support and spread the word about participating in this great initiative?

Recycle Your Aerosol Cans for Earth Day!

Each year nearly 4 billion aerosol products are produced in North America for a variety of common uses, from loosening a chain on a bike to shaving. Although aerosols have been free of CFCs since 1978, recent data shows that nearly 70% of consumers still believe that aerosol products harm the ozone layer.

Similarly, many consumers are unaware that consumer aerosol cans are recyclable. For example, empty steel cans of all kinds are recycled at a rate of more than 66%; yet, many empty steel aerosol containers are not finding their way to the recycling bins.

According to the Steel Recycling Institute (SRI), more than 94 million Americans have convenient curbside or drop-off access to recycling their empty steel aerosol containers. This means that more than 15 thousand programs accept steel cans, but only one third of those actively publicize their approval of empty aerosol cans. As a result, too many empty steel aerosol cans are taking up landfill space while valuable steel is not being recycled and reused as efficiently as it could be.

CAPCO and SRI are partnering to educate consumers and recycling program coordinators alike about the recyclability of empty steel aerosol containers. Many common products now feature the prominent Steel: “Please Recycle When Empty” logo to remind consumers of the recyclability of the package. Recycling empty steel aerosol containers is as simple as 1, 2, 3:

1. Consumers should empty the aerosol of its contents through normal use.
2. Check instructions for recycling from your local collector to see if empty aerosol cans are accepted for recycling in your municipality.
3. Place empty aerosol containers in bins along with steel food cans and other recyclable content.

The cans will be processed along with other household recycling materials. For single stream (mixed recyclables), the empty steel aerosol packages will be magnetically separated from other recyclables, and once separated, the empty steel packaging (food, aerosol, etc...) will be baled before being sent to steel mills to become a variety of new steel products.

For additional information related to the recycling of empty steel aerosol packaging or to encourage your municipality to begin accepting them, visit the SRI website at recycle-steel.org. To learn more facts and benefits of the aerosol product form, visit AerosolProducts.org.

Good Cleaning Tips??... Almost.

This post is in response to an interview on ABC News Now - Cleaning Mistakes

http://www.comcast.net/video/top-five-cleaning-mistakes/1541030352/Comcast/1546963550/

In this interview, Prevention Magazine Senior Health Editor Lauren Gelman gives some cleaning tips including:

1. Allowing a cleaning product to sit the appropriate amount of “dwell time” so that it is effective.
2. Not mixing 2 or more cleaning products together.
3. Wearing rubber gloves to avoid contact and absorption of cleaning products through skin.
4. Wash pillows, comforters, duvets monthly.
5. Spraying products onto a rag or sponge instead of spraying directly onto a surface.

For the most part, these seem to be sound recommendations; however her fifth recommendation to spray cleaners onto a rag in order to avoid inhalation of the product is questionable for two reasons: 1) you will likely be holding the rag/sponge closer to your face than just spraying the product directly onto the surface itself, and 2) most surface cleaners instruct you to spray the product directly onto the surface in order to achieve the proper “dwell time” –something that the author highlights the importance of in her first point.

She concludes the segment by cautioning consumers about the fact that there are no strict regulations in place about how a product can be marketed as “green.” Still, she says look for products that aren’t aerosols because “those are always greener than those that aren’t.” Not understanding why aerosol products (vs. non-aerosol) would influence how “green” a product is, I decided to do a bit of research.

I couldn’t find any facts that would y support why aerosol products are “less green” than non-aerosol products. This perception may still date back to more than 30 years ago when it was discovered that some of the chemicals used in spray cans may have been damaging our Earth’s atmosphere and ozone layer. Even though those chemicals, known as “CFCs” (chlorofluorocarbons), are no longer used to propel the contents out of the can, many people still falsely believe that aerosol products are bad for the environment. I also learned that the steel used to make the aerosol containers can actually be recycled at an increasing number of facilities across the U.S. For more information about recycling visit www.recycle-steel.org, and for information on recycling in your community visit www.earth911.org.