Category — Uncategorized

Stats:

• 380 lbs of aluminum is equal to about 12,998 individual cans of soda.
• 38,360 lbs of recycled paper and cardboard saves 326 trees.
• 228 cubic yards of landfill space would have been needed to dispose of this material.
• You can also look at the energy equivalents of these materials as 129 barrels of oil.

You can add to these numbers 1,517 4-foot fluorescent tube lights, recycled through the LampTracker program at Waste Management.

On Saturday July 10th, Green Team members Cari Weidner, Jim Bird, Ben Waidelich, Cyndy Weber and volunteers, Tim Nicely, Albert Castillo and Aaron Weidner walked our designated strip of highway picking up trash. On our journey to fulfilling our commitment to the Adopt A Highway program (and our big beautiful planet), we were able to fill 10 bags with ugly roadside garbage. This was our second trash adventure of the year and we expect to complete 2 more pickups. Our next outing is tentatively scheduled for the 11th of September (the weekend after Labor Day).

The first Arbor Day was started in Nebraska in 1872 by Julius Sterling Morton. Morton was a New York native, University of Michigan graduate, journalist, and politician who served as President Grover Cleveland’s Secretary of Agriculture. Nebraskans planted over 1 million trees that first year and it was declared an official U.S. holiday 13 years later in 1885.

Arbor Day, the day we celebrate trees, is a U.S. holiday officially observed in Ohio (and 18 other states) on the last Friday in April, but it is celebrated in other states and countries on dates better suited for those regions growing seasons.

The whole idea of Arbor Day is to educate the public on the benefits of trees and to encourage tree planting. Why plant trees, you ask:

• Tree roots hold soil in place. This reduces erosion and runoff.
• Trees remove CO2 (carbon dioxide) from the air, store it, and release oxygen back into the air. They also remove other greenhouse gases, pollutants, and particulates from the air.
• Trees provide food for humans and wildlife and habitats for many organisms.
• Trees planted close to a home or office building can dramatically cut cooling costs.
• Trees break up urban heat islands and can cool a city by 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

There are plenty of other perfectly good reasons to plant a tree or lots of trees if you wish. Visit these links to learn more about why trees are so important to our health and the health of our planet.
www.treelink.org/docs/29_reasons.phtml
www.treelink.org/linx/factoid.php

So far this year BilJax has recycled over 22,000 pounds of material. It would have taken 114 cubic yards of landfill space to contain it as municipal solid waste. Thank goodness we avoided that!

BilJax completed its first Adopt A Highway trash pickup for the 2010 trash picking season. We picked up 9 bags of trash from the corner of US 20A and 66 in Burlington to the corner of CO RD 20. BilJax AAH volunteers have collected 41 bags of trash thus far from that stretch of roadway since the first pickup in April of 2009. We recovered the usual suspects: ciggarette butts and cartons, soda and beer cans and bottles, fast food wrappers, glass bottles and various bits of paper.
‘Thank you’ to the volunteers who came out to help with the cleanup. And, BilJax would like to thank Carter Lumber for letting us use its parking lot as home base.

BilJax has replaced its bottled water coolers with bottleless water coolers. Instead of having water hauled from 12 miles away in 40 pound 5 gallon polycarbonate jugs, the facility now uses a point of source system. Water that is already supplied to the building is filtered and drank. There are a few other good reasons to make the switch:

• There is no risk of injury to the person who has to lift the 40 pound bottle of water to replace the empty ones.
• No more adding to CO2 emissions shipping full and empty water jugs around the area.
• UV lights inside the units kill any bacteria that make its way inside. 
• The cost of 5 gallons of bottled water is comparable to about 1,000 gallons from onsite water lines. That includes the sewer fees.

Why filtered and not reverse osmosis? We did not choose reverse osmosis units because about 3 gallons of water are lost as waste water for every gallon of water it produces for consumption. Because a major part of the switch was an environmental influence, reverse osmosis was not going to work for us. Most large water suppliers of reverse osmosis bottled water use a recovery system that reclaims some of that waste water until they achieve about 90% or better efficiency. Unfortunately that is not the case for a small unit where the ratio is 3:1.

The potential problem with the  polycarbonate container is the concern that the bisphenol A or BPA may leech into the water. Who knows how long the water jugs sit at the factory before they get shipped to your facility or how hot they get in the truck on the ride over. These factors may influence if and how much chemical is leeched into your bottled drinking water.

BilJax recycled 75,476 lbs or 37.7 tons of material instead of sending it to landfill as municipal solid waste. You can add to that another 4,278 lbs collected during the electronic waste recycling event last October.

Stats:

• 636 lbs of aluminum is equal to about 21,758 individual cans of soda.
• 58,642 lbs of recycled paper and cardboard saves 499 trees.
• 325 cubic feet of landfill space would have been needed to dispose of this material.
• You can also look at the energy equivalents of these materials as 176 barrels of oil.

It’s that time of year again, and so, the BilJax Green Team and other employees volunteer their time to help keep the county roads clean and beautiful.  These volunteers actually join forces under the Adopt A Highway program to maintain the cleanliness of roadways all over the country.  AAH volunteers go out 3 to 4 times per year, but if you would like to “do something” with a little less commitment, look for programs in your area affiliated with the Great American Cleanup. This is a national campaign under the Keep America Beautiful program that holds area cleanup activities from March 20th to May 1st. The BilJax AAH volunteers will kick start their 2010 litter pickups on April 10th in conjunction with these activities. Check back after the 10th for an update on the day’s events.

Six members of the BilJax Green Team and an additional volunteer (another BilJax employee) set out at 9am on Saturday November 7th for the last Adopt A Highway litter pickup of 2009. It turned out to be great weather for the final pickup. The team was able to collect 6 bags of garbage from their assigned stretch of highway. Thank you to everyone who participated in the cleanup and to the management at Carter Lumber who allows the crew to park in their lot. Adopt A Highway litter pickups will resume in the spring of 2010.

Any volunteer group who wishes to get involved in an Adopt A Highway program should contact their local Department of Transportation.  Additional program information and program contacts can be found at www.dot.state.oh.us.