Recycle Revolution
Their mission : “Foster a culture of recycling in North Texas, provide outstanding service to businesses that care, and use our success to rally for the causes of good neighborhoodship and environmental awareness.”
Recycle Revolution is a local recycling company in Dallas, located in the Deep Elm District, which was established in 2008 by Eddie Lott. While most people may think of a recycling plant as a large operation and one that with hundreds of employees and thousands of square feet. But that simply isn’t always the case. As we move towards a more sustainable world, you will start to see small recycling centers developing all over the city. Another misconception is that all recycling throughout the city is done by the city, the waste management company, that too simply isn’t the case. Course, the majority of the residential recycling services is provided by the waste management department through the individual cities, but for larger businesses, they are finding that utilizing smaller, more customer-friendly recycling companies is a more economical and convenient way to go. Recycling companies like Recycle Revolution provide a service for a small fee, and offer the convenience of recyclable materials pick up and peace of mind of making the effort to become more sustainable. Most people don’t realize that they pay for their waste management services. It’s included within resident’s water bills on a monthly basis. They even pay for the recycling services within that fee as well. Therefore, anyone who pays for water utilities, including businesses, is paying for this service. An unfortunate side of smaller companies such as Recycle Revolution is the lack of manpower and limiting resources. As of today, Recycle Revolution is limited to large businesses and housing complexes for the simple fact that the cost of transportation to pick up the recycled materials, and pay the staff to do so is costly. With that being said, Recycle Revolution has essentially doubled since 2008, which is encouraging.
Interestingly enough, I learned a great deal about recycling after having visited the recycling center. My family and I have been recycling far more than we throw away, for a couple of years now; however, I hadn’t realized that we too were contributing so some of the misconceptions and added frustrations of recycling our waste. The company has two trucks that travel throughout the city to their clients locations, retrieve their recyclables bins, and then return to the sorting center. From there, they unload the items from the truck, and bring it to their sorting dock, placing paper, plastic, chipboard, aluminum, and more into their respected bins. To delve further, the paper that comes into the center then requires to be sorted further into their appropriate bins. You wouldn’t think that paper could possibly be required further sorting, but it very much does, from news print, to glossy, to what Eddie calls the “truffles” which is called hard white that pays roughly $400/ton at the recycling center, which is far more than the estimated $80/ton of news print. The graph below demonstrates their recycled materials process, from retrieval, sorting, distributing and recycled product usage.
Click to Enlarge
As I come to a short closing, which is monumental for me :), I have to mention a few final thoughts. First of all, I would like to applaud Eddie and his entire crew at Recycle Revolution for taking on this important cause. Not many would be willing to not only put forth the effort to take on such a daunting task, but to make the sacrifices that are required to make that dream a realization, is something to be commended for. Secondly, I learned a great deal about recycling, and learned that I too am not properly preparing several of my recyclable items. It’s important to teach people about recycling, but it’s even more important to teach them the correct way to recycle. I had never realized how much work goes into putting forth this green endeavor, and to know that there other little things that each of us can do to help improve that productivity, was of great importance to me. Learning how to properly sort and prepare our recyclables is something that is rarely addressed, but should be. It was a shame to learn that larger recycling facilities will simply throw a recyclable container or product into the trash because it wasn’t prepared correctly, which weighs in on the amount of items recycled, as well as the manpower needed to sort through these items. Containers such as milk jugs need to be thoroughly washed out and the caps removed, before placing them into the recycle bin. This is because the plastic from the lid is a different grade of plastic than the jug itself; therefore, in order to ensure it’s recycled properly, it’s important to remember those extra steps. Lastly, it’s important to wash out yogurt containers before placing them in the bin as well. To learn more important tips on proper recycling methods, take a look at the following link below.
Resources
Recycle Revolution - www.recyclerevolutiondallas.com
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