Nov. 15 is America Recycles Day so Reduce, Reuse and Recycle

Wondering what to do with that dead cow in your backyard or those dead batteries in your flashlight?

The Center for the Development of Recycling—a partnership between San Jose State University’s Environmental Studies Department and Santa Clara County—has an online tool to guide you on how and where to recycle anything from the dead cow and batteries to painted or stained wood waste and everything in between.

Nov. 15 is America Recycles Day so take part in it and use the tool if you find one of the few materials the City of Milpitas does not accept. The tool is easy to use: Scroll the list of materials to find the one you wish to recycle, click on it and it will move to a box on the right. When you have your list complete fill in your ZIP code and click on the “find results” button.

It will return a list of companies that accept the specific material, the company's location and/or phone number, website links, whether the material can be picked up or dropped off, and other useful information.

Batteries, for example, are accepted at several places in and around Milpitas. That dead cow is a little trickier. Four places accept dead cows and two of them have restrictions on the cow’s age.

Recycling is something that can be embraced as a lifetime commitment. Think the three Rs—reduce, reuse and recycle.

One way to reduce is to stop junk mail from being delivered to your home. The Bay Area Outreach Coalition offers a stop junk mail kit (see the attached PDF for more detail or visit www.stopjunkmail.org) to get rid of those annoying catalogs, ads, promotional materials and other unwanted mail that winds up in your recycle bin.

America Recycle Day includes events such as the one at GreenMouse Recycling in San Jose that is hosting a three-day recycle-athon between Nov. 15 and 17 with a goal of recycling 25,000 pounds of electronic waste. Recycle something with a screen, such as a laptop, monitor, television or cell phone, and recieve a Starbucks gift card. Then take that Starbucks gift card and a friend to the nearest store and take advantage of the 2-for-1 offer going on. It's a win-win!