Winter Workshop SURVEY
Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world’s leading questionnaire tool.
YES! Collects Over One Tonne of Holiday Lights
The final count is in! Over 2,000 pounds collected by YES! teams.
As compared to last year’s haul of 1,972.6 pounds, this year’s teams collected 2,449.9 pounds of Holiday Lights as a part of the now annual “Recycle Your Holidays” campaign. Hosted by the Recycling Association of Minnesota, Recycle Your Holidays is a statewide initiative to recycle old holiday lights properly. As a part of the program, disabled adults are given work as they disassemble the into recyclable and non-recyclable materials.
Sleepy Eye led the collection with a total of 557 pounds gathered. Minnewaska and Litchfield were close behind with a combined total of 850 pounds. Springfield challenged us all by gathering 492.4 pounds (bettering their last year’s record). Cedar Mountain added a hefty 43.5 lbs. along with GFW’s ~60 lbs., rounding out the record-breaking collection.
To learn more about this program, please visit recycleminnesota.org.
Restructuring Northfield’s Recycling
The Northfield YES! Team in front of one of their recycling bin prototypes
The Northfield YES! Team/Transition Youth group, a group of high school students from Northfield High School and ARTech, has been working to build several recycling bin prototypes. Once they have been approved, these recycling bins will be permanently installed in the downtown Northfield area and surrounding parks.
Their goal is to design and build 16 recycling bins for downtown Northfield. In doing so, they intend to reduce waste and maintain the aesthetic appearance required in historic downtown Northfield.
The Northfield YES! Team working to build a recycling bin
These students have been working hard to implement this project, which has involved creating multiple prototypes.
They are very close to finishing up 2 prototypes to share with the city for approval. One bin is composed of cedar and the other is made from an old bed frame (a great example of reuse!).
For more information on Transition Northfield activities, visit transitionnorthfield.org
10 feet to Recycling
Next time you’re at your school’s basketball game, or any sporting event – take note of the garbage can locations as compared to the recycling bins. Typically, I am happy when I see a recycling container anywhere – however, you may find that that just having the bins may not be enough to encourage recycling of those plastic pop bottles.
Image from Recycle More Minnesota
At the end of a recent basketball tournament I attended I was shocked to find a garbage can half filled with plastic bottles while a mere 10 feet away sat a distinctive plastics recycling bin. Why? Consider your actions – at the end of a game you may be busy talking to people and simply want to dispose of your garbage instead of carrying around and because you’re busy chatting, you don’t want to look around for a place to throw them. So unfortunately what I witnessed is an all too common case of well-intentioned folks tossing their garbage in the first bin they see – in most cases, the trash can.
What simple step could we make to encourage recycling in this situation?
Move the recycling bin next to the trash instead of the crucial 10 steps away.
Litchfield Lights fill car
Litchfield's lights fill car.
While you could claim its a small car, this is the SECOND collection of lights this season from the Litchfield YES! team. Way to go Litchfield! Just think – all those lights are NOT going to a landfill this season.
A view from the inside!
