Good News in Recycling

I have some good news from the world of recycling. My brother once told me that Whole Food supermarket takes all kinds of batteries for recycling. I visited the relatively new Whole Food on Houston Street and Bowery but alas it did not have any such collection. The pastry shop inside looked great, even had benches for people with sweet teeth to rest and enjoy their decadence, but I digress. This past Sunday I visited the Whole Food on Seventh Avenue and 24th Street. Bro said it was the first Whole Food in NYC. I thought the one in Union Square is but he is probably right. He has more time to wander around. Me, nowadays I just go to work and come home. Anyway, right there in the entrance/exit area was a container in the shape of a Duracell Coppertop. I suppose Duracell is the sponsor for the service. A security guard was standing in front of the box and I had to ask him to let me take a look inside to make sure it was what I thought. So now in case I want to stop sneakily recycle batteries in my sister's co-op - they have a TechnoTrash collection box - I can make the trip to Whole Food. A bit out of the way for my routine, but Tekserve is just a few feet away. On second thought, maybe it is not such a great idea. I may end up at Tekserver and succumb to all those tempting external 1-TB hard drives...

The other good news is that I just noticed on a recent Staples monthly statement that since Feb 2009 they accept all kinds of ink cartridges for reward money. It used to be just HP, Epson, and Lexmark, then Epson got replaced by Dell, or something along those lines. Now any manufacturers' cartridges can be traded in for $3 apiece. I'll be working harder to "rescue" those old printers that people throw out every now and then. It seems some people know about the program already though. A few weeks ago I picked up a multi-function device and its two cartridges were already gone. I still took it to my backyard to wait for a trip to some electronic recycling event. A suggestion if you take the cartridges to Staples: The cashiers usually don't want to touch the cartridges, for fear of getting ink stain and all. They would simply waste a brand new plastic bag to use as a glove then to contain the cartridges. Better to bring the stuff in an old paper or plastic and give the cashier the whole thing, show them the items of course.

There, I think that's enough recycling rant to certify the Environmentalist tag in my Blogger description.