By Steve Davies,
Healthy Planet Columnist
So, a couple of weeks ago, I learned about a recycling event that was being held over at Meramec Community College. It was an event that I learned about at the last minute for electronics, metal and the shredding of paper, and apparently a lot of people also learned about the event, at the last minute or otherwise. To say it was a success would be an understatement. There were probably fifty cars in front of us when we got there and by the time we left, there were still that many cars behind us.
During that time my son and I sat there in the car waiting our turn, I began to wonder, is there a place somewhere that lists recycling events coming up throughout the city of St. Louis and St. Louis County. You know, a place where anyone can go to find these events. Well, being the librarian that I am, I decided to do a little research.
The first place I went to was the St. Louis County website and though it appears that they’ve done a makeover on their website since the last time I visited it, I thought that it was not very intuitive. It did offer a list of where to take items that the county didn’t recycle but the information was buried a little deeper than perhaps they needed to be. As a web designer myself, it generally shouldn’t be any more than two clicks.
Next up, I visited the City of St. Louis website and while I found it much easier navigate and do what I think St. Louis County was trying to do, giving you a list of where to take items that the city doesn’t recycle, they too don’t give you a list of events in which you could go to where you can recycle those items.
So, the last place I looked was on one of the websites of one of those places, in this case, the website of Midwest Recycling Center. What they recycle is electronics and what they offer is a list of Community Electronic Recycling Events which means if you go to their main page, click on recycling events link at the top of that page, it pulls up a list of upcoming events in which they’ll be at.
Along the way however, I also came across a website that listed places to shred paper, interestingly enough called Paper Shredding Events. Once you click there, simply search by the city you’re looking for like St. Louis and it pulls up a link to the list for St. Louis. Next up, I can’t wait to see what I can find on events for recycling metal.
For questions about recycling contact me at thprecycler@yahoo.com