Recycling in your Home and Office
The Register Guard Home and Garden January 2000 By Dylan Darling

While recycling has become mainstream in the last decade, it still has a long way to go to curb the amount of waste produced by Americans. With its beginnings as a grassroots movement, it's amazing that recycling has survived. People collected recyclables before the markets were developed. The collection of the materials was a factor in stimulating the use of recycled materials in new consumer products. BUT, recycling will only work if there is a market for the products that come from the recyclables that are collected and reprocessed and that is directly fueled by consumer demand of recycled products.

The symbol that represents recycling, features three arrows chasing each other. This "loop" illustrates how recycling is dependent on people not only recycling what they use, but also purchasing recycled products. This message was broadcast to the public by the Environmental Defense Fund when the group adopted the slogan: "If youčre not buying recycled products, you're not recycling."

One of the easiest places to start closing the loop is in your home office. One of the widest varieties of recycled content products are available for the home office. In copy paper alone, there are thousands of choices of recycled brands and now there are over 5,000 companies that make products out of recycled materials according to Karyn Kaplan of Campus Recycling at the University of Oregon.

Almost everything in the home office can be purchased from products made from recycled content (or reused). You can easily identify and purchase the following recycled products: file folders, copy/printer paper, notepads, clipboards, notebooks, refillable pens, recycling/waste containers and furniture . to name a few items. Even pencils are now made from many different recycled products, including jeans and money.

The key to buying recycled products is reading labels. Look for the trademark arrows of the recycling symbol and check the percent of post consumer content. Many paper products promote themselves as recycled, but come from industrial surplus (called pre-consumer) that would be recycled anyway. Post consumer means that the material has already been used by another person and it is being recycled to you.

The box that the product comes in can also indicate if it is recycled or not. If paper comes packaged in paperboard it is more likely to be from recycled paper, as paperboard typically is made with high recycled content, according to Kaplan. She added that one should, "buy recycled so you can recycle what you buy". This extends to the packaging of these products. Buying things that are minimally packaged with recyclable materials is another way to reduce the waste stream.

Along with recycling in your home office, it is important to reduce the amount of products you use and reuse all that you can. Reused items can be at garage sales and auctions. The University of Oregon and the State of Oregon both have seasonal auctions that offer desks, file cabinets and many other office necessities. Cost competitive furniture made for reused wood and plastic is now being offered by many stores.

Many office supply catalogs have sections in the back especially for recycled items. There are also many web sites that offer recycled products for your home and office, including http://www.ecomall.com and http://www.recyclestore.com. Some stores make it easy to find recycled products by marking the shelves. One local store that does so is the University of Oregon Bookstore.

To truly recycle one must not only have their wastes collected, but must support the processing of the material by purchasing the recycled products.
One ton of paper made completely from recycled scrap saves

according to the Californians Against Waste Foundation.
The saving of all these things can begin with you and your home office.

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