Dairy Tip Tuesday: Time to Recommit to Recycling?

Here at Hiland Dairy Foods, we’re always looking for new ways to reduce energy consumption, reuse items and materials and recycle everything that can possibly be recycled. But today, we want to ask for your help.

Shared Responsibility

We’re proud of our efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle. In fact, last year we:

Saved 508,000 pounds of plastic resin
Saved 115 million gallons of water
Recycled 2,000 batteries
Recycled 31,000 gallons of oil
Recycled 2,500 tons of cardboard
Recycled 117,922 pounds of office paper
Recycled 2 million pounds of plastic
Recycled 6,000 pounds of aluminum

But once our products are delivered to the store, we can’t do anything else. Things are, quite literally, out of our hands.

That’s where you come in…

Almost all of our packaging is recyclable in one way or another. For example, our plastic milk gallons and half gallons account for a lot of our sales every year, and they can be recycled at virtually every household recycling location. (Don’t forget the cap; just attach it and toss it in your recycling bin.)

But did you know that sour cream containers are often recyclable, too? And dips? And paperboard butter boxes? In fact, with a few minutes of research, you can probably find another 5-10 items that you might throw in the trash, which could be recycled instead! The challenge, however, is that recycling guidelines vary from community to community.

So here’s what you can do:

If you have a community recycling service that picks up items at your house, ask for their guidelines.
If you don’t have a recycling service, find a drop-off site that is convenient—maybe on your way to or from work—and plan on dropping items off once or twice a month.
In either case, we’ve found a resource that we think might be a big help. Visit http://search.earth911.com and you will find information relevant to your geographic area—often including details about how and where to recycle different types of materials.

If you’re the “go get ’em” type, maybe you could help spread the word to your family and friends or even set up a shared recycling program. We’re all in this together, so let’s work together to keep our Earth healthy, clean and beautiful. After all, it’s the only one we’ve got…