Woodbridge Ad-Hoc Sustainability Committee News

Please join us on Saturday, February 17 at 3pm at the Woodbridge Library Meeting Room to learn about composting/recycling.  Bring the kids too!  We will have a story and an activity for children upstairs.

Did you know our trash and recycling at the transfer station is weighed and our town pays for its disposal by weight?  SOOOO…If we all collectively watch what we throw out, we can save the town some money so the town can look into other initiatives like town composting, medicine bottle disposals, or mattress recycling!!!

How do we make trash weigh less?  Trash is trash.  Great question!  Below are some ideas!

Reduce - Woodbridge’s own Buy Nothing Facebook group is an excellent source of reducing what we buy.  If everyone shared the items at home that gets used once a year, how often would we need to buy anything?  Create a post on something you need, as well as things you don’t need anymore, but are still functional.  You’d be surprised at who could use it as well as meet a few neighbors.

Reuse - Find creative ways to reuse your trash.  Toilet paper rolls + lint from the dryer make excellent fire starters.  Jelly jars make great flower vases, especially during teacher appreciation week.  Worn out towels and blankets make great donations at animal shelters.  Paper bags make great compost bags.  Get creative!

Recycle - For those who already do this, thank you!  For the naysayers who say “80% of recycling doesn’t get recycled.”  This is true, but think of the money in trash disposal we can save by sorting out the recycling.  Please don’t throw all your trash in recycling.  Heavily contaminated bins can be rejected, and that means fees for the town.

Compost - The best way to decrease trash weight is to separate your biodegradables from the regular trash.  You don’t need a fancy rotating composter to start.  A few Woodbridge residents bury their compost in parts of their garden (rotating every week).  A few backyard composters even throw meat and dairy into their woods to let the animals have at it.  Want to get more serious about composting?  Please join us on February 17 at 3pm at the Woodbridge Library Meeting Room.

Dump your liquids - Squeeze out your ketchup packets.  Empty your soda cans.  Pour out your maple syrup.  Melt off unfinished popsicles or ice cream off plates.  A lot of food liquids can go in your septic tanks with no issues.

Clean your containers - Not only does this reduce ants and smell from your trash and recycling, it will reduce weight big time.  And it is required in order to be recycled.  The last few chunks of salsa, the leftover ketchup in the bottle, the sauce in your takeout sauce containers, the leftover yogurt in the containers – all those little weights add up!  Rinse them out with hot water and save weight!

Glass Recycling - This increases the chances of glass to get recycled and reduces weight in the recycling bin.

GREEN TIPS:

• Use less plastic!! buy items that come in containers with less plastic.  Example:  cream cheese that comes in a block instead of plastic tubs.  Soap refills that come in bags instead of plastic containers.  Powder laundry detergent that comes in cardboard boxes instead of liquid detergent that comes in plastic containers.
• Don’t flatten your water bottles or milk jugs.  The recycling center actually wants the air pockets to help sort out the recycling.
• Caps can get stuck in sorting machines.  That’s why bottle caps can be recycled if they are screwed back on the bottle.
• Small containers like medicine bottles can’t be recycled because they get stuck in the sorting machines.