Recycling 101

Community Resources

City of Oberlin

The City of Oberlin recycling program uses 5 gallon black buckets labeled with the City’s recycling logo for collection services. These containers are available for free pick-up in the lobby of the municipal building at 69 South Main St. Recycling brochures are available at both 69 South Main St. and 85 South Main St. or by calling the Public Works Department at 775-7218. Residents (including students in off-campus rentals) may place unlimited amounts of properly prepared recyclable materials at the curb for collection.

The City of Oberlin collects five categories of materials at curbside for recycling. These are aluminum and steel cans, plastics #1 (PET) and #2 (HDPE), glass containers, newspaper and corrugated cardboard. The city also provides leaf collection, brush collection, and landscape waste recycling.

Recycling information for the city of Oberlin can be found on their web site.

Lorain County

The Ohio General Assembly established the solid waste management districts of Ohio in 1989, and required each county to belong to one. The responsibilities and duties of each District fall into two broad categories:

  • To prepare and maintain a comprehensive Solid Waste Management Plan, and measure progress toward its goals by collecting detailed statistics on recycling and solid waste disposal.
  • To promote recycling, reuse, and reduction of solid waste through educational and informational programs, support of recycling businesses and organizations, and the direct operation and/or support of actual collection events and programs.

Among other services, the Lorain County Solid Waste Management District organizes a number of collection events throughout the year for hazardous household waste (paints, pesticides, fluorescent bulbs, propane cylinders, household cleaners, etc.), E-scrap (computers, cell phones, TVs, office equipment, etc.) and tires.

Recycling information for Lorain County can be found on their web site.

ON CAMPUS RESOURECS

Mixed paper, plastic, cans & glass

Blue recycling containers are located throughout campus. Make sure to find the recycling container nearest you—and use it!

Cardboard

Flatten boxes and take them to one of several cardboard dumpsters on campus.

Toner cartridges

Staples has agreed to recycle toner cartridges from copy machines. Simply give the old cartridge to the college delivery person when you receive deliveries. Toner cartridges from laser printers can be recycled through the manufacturer. Simply send back the old cartridge to the manufacturer using the certificate or label provided

Recycled Products Co-op

The Recycled Products Co-op is a student led initiative that sells 100% post consumer recycled office supplies (binders, notebooks, pencils, pens, tree-free paper, folders) that are competitively priced. They also sell used office supplies (pens, pencils, computer paper, binders, lined paper, notepads, folders, adhesives, staples, etc.) for a suggested donation of 25 cents. They also have a mailing center with envelopes, packaging envelopes, packing supplies and much more! The RPC is located in Wilder 329. Look for the signs to lead you there.

Recycled Content Products

In addition to the RPC and recycled content paper, Staples offers a wide range of other recycled content office supplies including items you might not expect like staples, letter trays and even scissors. Simply type “recycled” into the search box on Stapleslink.com and look for the green recycled logo.

Free Store

The Free Store is located in the basement of Pyle and provides a place where reuseable items of all kinds can be donated or taken for reuse. The new Free Store had its grand opening on February 22, 2007. It provides an excellent avenue for reuse of materials on campus, diverting useful items from the landfill and consequently reducing the extraction of natural resources.

Double sided printing

Re-use paper that's already printed on one side by manually feeding it into printers for draft documents.

Once-used paper can also be reused in plain paper fax machines and copy machines.

Put a “Usable scraps” bin next to the copy machines and printers to use for scrap paper.

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