Vicki Baker
More than 60 percent of trash that ends up in landfills can be recycled. Plastics take around 500 years to decompose; aluminum cans take up to 200 years; batteries take 100 years; glass takes millions of years and Styrofoam never decomposes.
Living in Denton, you likely do some form of recycling of paper, cans and bottles. But where does it all go? As part of the RR Democratic Club Environmental Initiative, a group of twelve club members, facilitated by Jack Odom, recently toured the Denton County Recycling Center. The tour lead by Venessa Ellison, Education Coordinator for the city’s sustainability program, showed how and where all that trash is recycled and viewed some of the recycled materials being processed.
Through its recycling program, the City of Denton is an active participant in diminishing the need to manufacture paper, plastics, metals and glass from virgin resources and reducing the burning of fossil fuels to obtain raw materials for manufacturing. The end result – waste reduction and recycling reduces the amount of harmful greenhouse gas emissions, thus, benefitting both people and the environment.
Here at the Ranch, recycling is to be incorporated into the new Pinnacle Fitness Center upon completion. However, the remainder of the Ranch’s public areas do not actively participate. One goal of the