BECKLEY, WV (WOAY) – Earth Day may be over, but you can reduce, reuse, recycle, and help take care of the planet any day out of the year. And before you throw away your plastic bottles and aluminum cans simply to be wasted, consider recycling them first. Making the choice to recycle not only helps the Earth’s pollution problem, but it makes our lives much smoother by producing less waste.
“This plastic bottle, and all these other plastic materials, have been put in the recycling bin rather than the trash bin, and so these will all become another plastic bottle or another plastic something else in the near future,” says Sherrie Hunter, Director of Education for the Raleigh County Solid Waste Authority.
Every paper, plastic, metal, or glass item people recycle locally comes to the Beckley Recycling Center to be processed, baled up in clusters weighing thousands of pounds, and sent away. But apart from handling our recyclables of today, the center also educates a new generation on recycling for the future.
“Our children are the future leaders of tomorrow, and we like to say here, learning to safeguard the environment at an early age cultivates a lifelong appreciation of your surroundings,” she says.
Items like plastics or aluminum do not decompose and can have damaging effects on the environment. And why would you just throw them away when they can be made into something entirely new?
“The importance of recycling runs from A to Z,” Hunter says. “It really does your heart good to know that you’re doing something good for the environment when you practice those three R’s: reduce, reuse and recycle.”
You can bring all of your paper, plastic, and cardboard items to the bins at the center for recycling, and the school recycling bins are expected to be back up and running by next year.
