Glass cullet is the term for glass that has been recycled, cleaned, crushed and ready to be processed into new product. Thanks to one of the coolest community programs I’ve seen lately, Ripple Glass is making it easy for Kansas City residents to recycle their nearly 150 million pounds of used glass each year.
Bravo to Boulevard Brewing Co. for going to such lengths to reverse the effects of their 10 million bottles disposed of annually. That’s a lot of beer people!
Ripple Glass is the culmination of Boulevard and other local companies and community organizations partnering to create a state of the art glass processing plant and 60 dedicated recycling containers placed throughout the city. Coolest part of this? A local company is now converting all that recycled glass into fiberglass insulation. This will save tons of energy resulting in lower emissions while producing a product that helps save even more energy!
Interesting statistic: Throughout the United States, nearly 30% of all glass containers are recycled.
Scary statistic: Last year Greater Kansas City ranked last among major metropolitan areas with a recycling rate of 5%.
So here’s our chance KC. Ripple Glass has made it SUPER easy to recycle all our food and beverage glass.
Step 1: Go to any local Price Chopper and purchase a cool home/office personal collection bin. It’s only $4.99 – affordable is good!!
Step 2: Toss all your glass food and beverage containers into the bin. No need to separate by color, remove labels or rinse the glass. (I know you’re excited but don’t do crazy – no windows, cookware, dishes or as RG says, no ham sandwiches.)
Step 3: Go to www.rippleglasskc.com, locate the nearest collection container, swing by and dump your glass!
Step 4: REPEAT
See, super easy! Let’s get Kansas City ranked at the top of national list. I’m headed to Price Chopper right now to pick up two bins – one for the office and one for home! I challenge all of you to do the same.
Peace + Love + Furniture (and glass recycling)
Courtnay
For those of you who know me well, you can picture my desk. For those of you who don’t, I’m a piler people. My paper situation is a heap of organized chaos with a dash of crazy. I live in a very paper heavy world. Drawings, brochures, faxes, proposals, invoices, revisions and it goes on and on and on. It’s not an ideal situation, or a very green one for that matter.
I’ve always been intrigued by the notion of companies going paperless, albeit a little skeptical. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a fantastic idea. I’m just trying to grasp concept versus reality – at least in my world. But do you know the average office employee uses approximately 10000 sheets of paper per year? I saw a figure that equaled out to around $3600 per person per year for the life cycle costs. That’s a lot of money!
Even if a company can’t go “paperless” there are still many ways to decrease actual paper consumption. Get some good ideas from Waukesha County Wisconsin – they have had great success during their paper reduction initiative. See some of their tips and tools:
So, in the spirit of a new year – resolutions and all. I’m testing a couple ways I can implement more digital files and less paper usage. I think it’s mostly going to be a discipline thing on my part, habits are hard to break you know!
Peace + Love + Furniture (and paper)
Courtnay
Whoa. It’s one thing to read about excess furniture – but to see old task chairs being rolled down an alley and tossed into a dumpster to make way for new ones was a little mind blowing! No kidding, here in our fine city (9th & Walnut) I stumbled across this mass grave of office chairs.
I know old office furniture is not sexy and can sometimes be a major hassle to manage – especially when companies are in a position of upgrading, but a dumpster? Really? At first I wondered if the previous owners were going out of business, not an off the wall idea in this economy. Nope, they were getting new chairs and these old ones were taking up space! Ahh!
With minimal planning, these chairs could have been diverted to non-profit organizations, schools, churches, start-up businesses etc. There are tons of free resources to post excess furniture on:
NonProfit Connect (formerly the Council on Philanthropy) is an organization specifically designed to connect, support and offer resources to non-profits and volunteers. They have a fantastic classifieds section to advertise for free.
Idle Asset is an online facility warehouse that has pre-owned furniture for sale or a free section for non-profits and schools. Working through office furniture dealers, Idle Asset has a national audience and is best utilized when you have large quantities and a little time to move the furniture.
Craigslist can even be a great tool. Advertise free furniture and you are sure to have some takers!
Want some more ideas?? Email us for a list of resources and creative ways to keep furniture out of the landfill. So please, the next time your company is stuck with furniture you don’t need, just say NO to trashing it. Give it a fabulous new home. Need help? Call us, we love to rescue!
Peace + Love + Furniture
Courtnay
