If you come to the Verona Recycling Center this Saturday, April 14, from 9 a.m. to noon you can come away with a free reusable Verona tote bag or a recycling bin. The Verona Environmental Commission is holding the event in honor of Earth Day to raise awareness of the problems posed by paper or plastic shopping bags.
It takes a lot of natural resources and energy to make paper and plastic shopping bags, and recycling them can be cumbersome and costly. To recycle paper bags, the paper must be turned back into pulp by using potentially dangerous chemicals. Manufacturing new plastic from recycled plastic bags requires two-thirds of the energy used to make the original bags. In this country, that is most often energy from coal-burning power plants. (So-called biodegradable plastic bags are not actually so, the VEC says: They’re recycled plastic mixed with cornstarch. The cornstarch biodegrades and the plastic breaks down into tiny little pieces but does not actually disappear.) Over 100,000 birds and marine life die each year due to an encounter with plastic debris, much of it plastic bags.
The VEC will be giving away one reusable canvas bag or bin to each family at the Earth Day event. The recycling center is located at 10 Commerce Court, just east of Grove Avenue. For more information on recycling and the environment in Verona, see the VEC’s Web site.
