Giving Unwanted Junk a New Life

Republic presented a check to the town - Courtesy image — *Republic Service presented a check to Recycling Coordinator Gretchen Carey and DPW Director Roy Sorenson as a result of the Spring Recycling Day – Courtesy image*

Submitted by Gretchen Carey, Bedford’s DPW Recycling Coordinator

Every spring and fall, the DPW holds recycling events to give the residents of Bedford a place to dispose of some of those hard-to-get rid-of items like scrap metal and electronic waste, and an easy way to securely get rid of their sensitive documents. This year, at the request of the residents, we added Styrofoam collection. Our thanks to Allied Waste/Republic Services for helping to sponsor this event.

Saturday, May 31^st turned out to have ideal weather for this event, and approximately one hundred cars traveled around the building to drop off one or more materials. Styrofoam collection with the ReFoamIt company was visited by about a third of the residents who attended the event. Several residents came in cars that were packed to the windows with the material, and a few came twice.

Cyclist Terry Gleason brought his styrofoam on a bike trailer - Courtesy image — *Cyclist Terry Gleason brought his styrofoam in a bike trailer – Courtesy image*

Resident Terry Gleason even rode his bike to the event with Styrofoam strapped in to his bike trailer, the epitome of sustainability (pictured here with ReFoamIt owner Dave Sherman). For financial reasons Styrofoam is not collected curbside in Bedford, but bulk collections on days like this make it feasible to melt it down and reuse it to create plastic picture frames and other commercially available items. The initial response to this newly added event has been positive, but residents hoping to see this collection happen again in the fall are welcome to send feedback to [email protected]

The DPW changed the way that paper was shredded this year, choosing to secure the collected paper in a Doc Shredding truck and shred it in an offsite facility where the energy used was made from solar power and reclaimed oil. This change streamlined the entire event, avoiding the crowding and lines that have occurred in the past when documents were shredded on site. 3700 pounds of paper material were collected in three hours, were shredded shortly after, and are now being recycled into new paper products.

Excel Metal Recycling collected scrap metal of every sort, with a total of 5940 pounds of metal collected. The money made from the sale of this metal is used to support this event and other recycling projects.