If you have the urge to make a fresh start in 2012 by cleaning the clutter out of your house, keep in mind that a lot of the things tucked away in basements, attics, crawlspaces, and storage sheds can be refurbished for continued use or recycled to keep toxic materials out of landfills, including your old Christmas lights.
And while it may be too soon to take down your current decorations — most of us procrastinate until at least after January 1 — many neighborhood hardware stores have recycling programs that will take the tangled strands of flickering incandescent bulbs that haven’t been part of your holiday motif for some time.
In Minnesota, one organization has implemented the holiday-light recycling program on a statewide level, the only one of its kind in U.S., and it employs people with disabilities to do the disassembling. The Recycling Association of Minnesota (RAM) program is now in its third year and business is booming, as RAM spokesperson Ellen Telander tells Madeline Salmon of the Twin Cities Daily Planet:
The goal this year is for at least 400 or more businesses to sign up, keeping the program at or above its previous level. Telander said RAM would also like the program to recycle at least 200,000 pounds of lights this year.
That’s a lot of strands to untangle, bulbs to unscrew, and wiring to remove. But to no one’s surprise they’ve hired the right people to get the job done. Contract labor programs employ people with disabilities to perform many roles in keeping our communities green.
In Memphis, Tennessee, William Hunter is part of a crew that recycles paper from municipal offices and private businesses. Hunter’s primary task is stuffing the ripped pieces into the baler and then binding and stacking the bales. But as The Commercial Appeal reporter Beth Warren discovered, his enthusiasm for the work goes beyond his assigned duties:
Hunter is so driven, the SOS staff found him voluntarily cleaning walls and organizing the storage area during downtime…’I try to keep things straight,’ said Hunter, who also can operate a forklift.
Any good eco-warrior will tell you, however, that finding ways to reuse items is an even more valuable way to protect the environment than recycling. Earlier this month we touched on the New England Assistive Technology Center, a Hartford-based organization that employs people with disabilities in restoring medical equipment and then reselling it at deep discounts to the underserved and uninsured in their community.
Last week, an article by Robin Brown in Delaware’s The Daily Times showed how the state’s Goodwill program has implemented an even more ambitious medical equipment refurbishment program that includes a dozen sites as well as transportation and both physical and online retail outlets.
People with disabilities are hired to collect, sort, recondition, repair, and sanitize pieces of equipment ranging from canes to blood pressure machines to hospital beds and rails. Goodwill of Delaware spokesman Ted Sikorski tells Brown the goal is to continue to expand and make the program a self-sustaining business, while putting the current program in the proper seasonal context:
For now, though, the business is moving right along and its employees are fast at work. To look in on them, [Sikorski] said, ‘It’s like Santa’s workshop for medical equipment.’
Do you have a recycling/refurbishment project that needs a workforce eager and able to perform hands-on manual tasks? Talk to our Contract Services division or post in the comments section.
Image by Son of Groucho, used under its Creative Commons license.