Plastics are everywhere, from shopping bags to cutting-edge medical devices. But as they’ve become more pervasive, they’ve also become more troublesome.
recycling
Posted inNews & Opinion
Reining in e-waste
Consumers have an insatiable appetite for electronic devices, whether it’s the powerful smartphones in their pockets, the massive television screens on their walls, or the sleek laptops they carry with them. The electronics industry understands that appetite well, and it’s constantly churning out new products to render the old ones obsolete. And every time a […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Tired out
Guess how many illegally dumped tires the City of Rochester collects each year? Go on. Nope, higher. Higher. The city picks up between 80,000 and 120,000 individual tires annually. That’s a minimum of 20,000 sets. “This is nothing new,” says Norman Jones, commissioner of the city’s Department of Environmental Services. “I’ve been dealing with waste […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Trash talk
In five years, Monroe County’s Mill Seat landfill, which takes waste from the county and the City of Rochester, could be full. But county officials want the Riga landfill to last another 25 years, so they’ve applied to the Department of Environmental Conservation for permission to add 118 acres to the current 95-acre landfill. County […]
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Changes coming for recycling center
The company that operates the county-owned Mill Seat landfill now also runs Monroe’s recycling center. Waste Management was awarded through a competitive process the 10-year recycling center contract late last year, and took over operations on January 1. Cascades Recovery ran the center for 10 years — through two, five-year contracts — and also submitted […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
NEWS BLOG: Son of a litter bug
As I was driving my mother south toward the Pennsylvania border last week to visit her brother, she did something that stunned me. She reached down and grabbed a handful of trash – a paper cup, used tissues, and some candy wrappers – that had gathered at her feet. Then she rolled down the passenger […]
