Common Knowledge: plastics are no good at decomposing and are made from non reneawble fossil fuels

Plus, they leach all kinds of harmful chemicals like BPA from everyday items. Our plastic water bottles and receipts are actually toxic items: gross.

Plastic bags and shrink wrap? It appears that those can't be recycled in UMBC's current dual stream system- we have a bin for paper, a bin for plastic bottles, aluminum cans, and glass bottles, and then a bin for compost... but then when it comes to all those grocery bags, those can't get thrown in with the lot. They gunk up the processing systems at the recycling plant. So, in Baltimore County we aren't even supposed to send out our recycling IN plastic bags (handy fact for all the neighbors not living on campus and recycling at home).

So what do we do with plastic film (FYI film is what recycling peeps call those weird plastics like grocery bags and shrink wrap)

This week for Recyclemania (in case you haven't heard UMBC is part of a 8 week competition to get the best numbers for waste and recycling- so you should probably tell everyone you know, update your fb status & tweet away about this ish). As part of this wondrous time of promoting recycling we get a special treat- we get to recycle those weird plastic films (all my grocery bags in the garage and basement are getting cleaned out!) for 30 days.

There is a senior here at UMBC whose name is Brent. He thinks it just makes sense that we recycle and minimize waste and compost because it's efficient and good for the earth and saves money and is just practical. Lucky for us, he is also an SGA sustainability intern, and for YOU he has gone out of his way to help out with the recyclemania thing to help UMBC win this whole recyclemania competition thing.

Anyway, what our friend Brent has done is he has gotten lovely fancy cardboard boxes and created amazing labels for them and put them around the Commons. Those boxes are there for us to get rid of our amassed grocery bags. So nice of him! So make the world a better place and save UMBC from losing Recyclemania, by collecting up all your plastic film stuff, bring it with you to the Commons and recycle it.

And don't stop there. Next Wednesday is ecycling. So if you have outdated ancient useless electronics DO NOT throw them in the trash. They are full of horrible poisons. Do you want that karma? I didn't think so.

If you missed the spotlight or haven't marked your calendar yet:

RecycleMania E-Cycling Day Event

March 5th 7:30a.m. to 1:30p.m.

For everyone!

Bring your unused electronics, anything that plugs in or runs on batteries.(NO refrigerators)

**Departments must have disposition forms completed for any University owned equipment.**

Your friendly UMBC sustainability coordinator,

Tanvi