#wastediversion

Arlington’s Town Day is always a big hit for families to come out and celebrate the local food & craft vendors. However, with any street fair comes ample waste and refuse. The Arlington Recycling Committee had 2 major recycling / trash areas and provided the ‘know-how’ guidance for people to accurately discard their waste in real time. 

The committee also had a booth answering fair attendees’ questions about residential recycling. My committee colleagues had asked me to pull a display together illustrating the different avenues that residents have available to dispose of their refuse. I figured what better way to simplify the confusion than with concentric circles and bold / bright colors?!! 

Using a standard rainbow color scheme was not going to be feasible. Who wants to see the expected anyway? Here’s a bit of the thought process of how and why this ended up being my direction. I think of TRASH’s real name as ‘despicable trash’. So, obviously that was deemed grey and at the bottom of the mix. COMPOST is most definitely browns especially as the food ages. Therefore, orange seemed like a logical color match for compost. The RECYCLING BIN is traditionally blue and required a lot of real estate on the display since recycling is our biggest means of diverting material from the trash. The RECYCLING CENTER handles the hard to recycling items but in fact recyclable. The wide variety of materials are frequently highly recyclable or even better could be used again by someone else. I don’t think this category gets enough press. Hence, I put him at eye level. HAZARDOUS WASTE - color was set as it is notoriously yellow. Hazardous waste can be radioactive, flammable, poisonous, etc. hence the specific materials needed to be verbally communicated to the residents rather than physically pinned up on the display. Also, Lexington’s recycling center currently takes Arlington’s hazardous waste. Therefore, he went between recycling center and store dropoffs. STORE DROPOFFS help navigate equally important materials that need to stay out of the recycling bin and/or trash. The plastic film in the recycling bin is the biggest problem for manufacturing recycling facilities to contend with since it buggers up the machinery and potentially harms the machine operators. 

Why these materials and what about them? Each category is trying to show as much diversity as possible. The items were picked for either being iconic, or the biggest questions the committee receives, or the most common contenders the recycling facility face. They’re displayed as we wish people would discard the materials eg. milk jugs rinsed, slightly crushed and cap returned. Brands were all de-emphasized as it’s the materials that has our attention captivated. Most important point to make is that all the items are attached to the metal (recyclable) display with wire. The idea is that we can replace items as they deteriorate or the industry regulations change! 

Happy Earth Day! Get this, plastic film (you know the kind that beautifully puckers when stretched) is recyclable when brought back to the store!!! The iconic How2Recycle labels tells you all you need to know.

REPREVE is a manufacturer with a strong EPR policy. They are turning #1 PET/PETE plastic (ie. water bottles) into new useful products such as nylon thread and fabric. This photo illustrates 3 phases of the process for what happens to the recovered material as it transitions to new products. Thread + Fabric! 

Recycled Beauty is making the visual connection of the Circular Economy exciting on the consumer level.