Recycle! East Lansing Takes Place this Saturday, June 4th

This Saturday, June 4^th, the City of East Lansing invites residents to bring their hard-to-recycle items to the Abbott Center to be reused, recycled, or disposed of properly. This annual event began over 20 years ago as a community clean up effort organized by community members, and continues to grow larger every year.

In just the past few years, improvements have been made to help provide residents with the resources necessary to keep our community healthy and sustainable. New recycling containers have been implemented, and the Simple Recycling program has given residents an option for curbside recycling of textiles, clothing, and household goods.

“To achieve significant waste reduction we must find convenient outlets for our residents to recycle and/or reuse materials,” Says Cathy DeShambo, the City’s Environmental Services Administrator. “This event helps residents with additional items such as styrofoam, appliances, bikes, books, electronics, and unused medications.”

Some items will be accepted free of charge at Saturday’s event, while others will require a small fee. Because of dramatically increasing costs for recycling electronics, this year residents will be charged a $20 fee for each TV and monitor: cash or check only. Other items that require a fee include tires and unusable items.

Items accepted free of charge will include: air conditioners, small appliances, automotive batteries, bikes, books, boxboard, cell phones, clothing, cardboard, dehumidifiers, eye glasses, freezers, usable furniture, usable household items, lawn mowers, medications, plastics #1-#7, polystyrene, refrigerators, scrap metal, shoes, stoves, televisions, textiles, working vacuum cleaners, washers & dryers and some electronics.

Some items cannot be accepted at all, including compact fluorescent tubes, household hazardous waste, gas cans, and box springs. Household batteries will not be accepted this year, but residents can take these to any City building during the year.

Event coordinators will be happy to talk to residents about places they can take the items that can’t be accepted at the event, to be recycled safely. A full list of items accepted and refused can be found online at http://www.cityofeastlansing.com/301/Recycle-East-Lansing.

For the first time ever, Recycle! East Lansing is partnering with Recycle by Design, an organization that will help collect furniture items that aren’t quite ready to be thrown out just yet. DeShambo notes that “We have been struggling the last couple years with the amount of furniture that residents bring that, with some TLC and artistic flair, could be transformed for reuse instead of going into wood waste.” Recycle by Design will bring life to these unwanted pieces of furniture in order to find them a new home.

According to DeShambo, East Lansing has made great strides in implementing innovative new programs to help residents work together towards a greener future. “The last couple of years have been pretty tremendous in terms of participation,” she says. “We have been able to collect 30-40 tons of material for recycle/reuse.”

Volunteers are still needed for this event, and your help would be greatly appreciated in helping to unload vehicles, answer questions, and keep the traffic line moving. Volunteers can choose between a morning shift or an afternoon shift and which type of material they would like to recycle. All volunteers will receive a T-shirt, food, and beverages.

Those interested in lending a hand can sign up online at http://vols.pt/X8AFsL.

For more information, feel free to contact Sarah Plantrich at splantr@cityofeastlansing.com.

The event will take place Saturday, June 4th from 8 a.m. - 3 p.m. at the Abbott Center, 1400-1500 Abbot Road. The event is rain-or-shine, and participants are asked to bring proof of residency.