Currently, only around 12.5% of e-waste is recycled. Cell phones and other electronic items contain high amounts of precious metals like gold or silver. Americans dump phones containing over $60 million in gold/silver every year! For every one million cell phones that are recycled we can recover 35,274 lbs of copper, 772 lbs of silver, 75 lbs of gold and 33 lbs of palladium. So what does this all mean? We should probably do a little better job at recycling our electronics, which according to…

The popularity of recycling has seen its ups and downs since the idea was sprouted many years ago. Although some give credit to the dinosaurs for starting the recycling trend by decomposing to produce various oils and gasses, we`re going to stick to recycling milestones (good and bad) that won`t stretch the imagination too far. From the first municipal dump program in 500 B.C. to a revolutionary idea in 2014 that could lead to plastics recycling themselves (actually not as outlandish as crediting dinosaurs for…

The importance of protecting the environment came into focus for many of us over the past few decades – the first Earth Day in 1970 serving as the catalyst of change to a more environmentally conscious society. However the concept of recycling and conservation is much older than we think – there are many examples of people and businesses reducing their waste and being resourceful going as far back as the 1700s! In the formative years of America, colonists would collect rags and use them…

The “Number One” Recycling Trend of 2014 The average family of three can fill up a 275-gallon tank to the tippy-top with pee in about eight months—that’s the equivalent of about 12 of our large Waste Watcher recycling containers! One can only imagine what the number would be like for the average trio of college students… So why are we talking about pee? And more specifically, why would we want to recycle it? According to Earth911.com, “Our “Number One” only accounts for 1% of the…

Earth Day was founded in the U.S by U.S Senator Gaylord Nelson and globally by entrepreneur John McConnell in early 1970. Now, Earth Day is supported by over 192 countries on April 22nd. Every year over 1,000,000,000 people and almost every school-aged child takes part in annual Earth Day celebrations to promote conserving our environment by protecting, recycling, cleaning and innovating. Not sure how to support Earth Day this year? Here are some examples of what you can do to spread the word: A Billion…