America Recycles Day

Happy America Recycles Day!  Since I have been celebrating this day off and on since 2013, but have never shared the description of the day from National Day Calendar before, here it is.

Each year on November 15, millions of people across the United States take part in America Recycles Day, a day which was created to raise awareness about recycling and the purchasing of recycled products.

HOW TO OBSERVE

Recycle, buy recycled goods and help teach others the benefits of recycling and continue to do so each day! Use #AmericaRecyclesDay to post on social media.

HISTORY

America Recycles Day was started in 1997 by the National Recycling Coalition and is declared each year by Presidential Proclamation, encouraging Americans to commit to recycling.  Since 2009, this day has been a program of Keep America Beautiful.  There are thousands of events that are held across the United States to raise awareness about the importance of recycling and offering personal pledges that can be signed, committing to recycling and buying products made from recycled materials.

Just as I did for World Diabetes Day yesterday, I have videos about the day and recycling to share.  Follow over the jump!

I begin with Celebrating America Recycles Day by Diverting Waste.

EPA Regional Administrator Alexandra Dunn tells us about the importance of diverting waste from landfills by recycling, reusing and composting materials that are not trash.

I'm glad to see the EPA actually doing (some) of its job instead of trying to make things worse.

Since America Recycles Day is now a program of Keep America Beautiful, here is an updated version of one of their Public Service Announcements (PSAs) that I embedded in the first post I wrote on the day in 2013 (the original has since been removed), "I Want To Be Recycled" - Journey :60.

The Recycling Campaign, sponsored by Keep America Beautiful and the Ad Council, aims to generate awareness, explain how and where to recycle, mobilize individual ownership and emotional connection to recycling through community building, and transform recycling into a daily social norm. The campaign shows consumers that their recyclable materials want to be something more, and promotes recycling as a way to give garbage another life. In "Journey," a plastic bottle refuses to settle for being just a bottle and recognizes its dream in a coast-to-coast journey after being recycled.

That's recycling done right.  Unfortunately, a lot of Americans don't know how to recycle, which Fusion portrays in America's Recycling Problem.

America’s embarrassingly low recycling rate is costing the country billions of dollars every year.

America doesn't just need to recycle more, it needs to recycle better.  Here's a video from Waste Management describing what not to do in Recycling 101: America Recycles Day.

We teamed up with our friends at Bridging The Gap to take you behind-the-scenes of our recycling facility in Kansas City and provide you with recycling best practices.

I hope my readers better how to recycle after watching that.

I think I'm done with national days for now, unless I celebrate Fast Food Day tomorrow.  I think I'll pass.  It looks like it would be bad for my health.