Mixed Paper

Susquehannock Environmental Center, a non-profit recycling station near Bel Air, will begin accepting mixed paper on Tuesday.Used paper products, including magazines, junk mail, cereal boxes and egg cartons can be dropped off at the center. Susquehannock is at 700 N. Tollgate Road near Harford Mall, just off U.S. 1.The center will continue to accept used newspapers and certain grades of office paper, including computer paper.Susquehannock officials said paper products should be separated by mixed paper, office paper and newspapers.

Baltimore will offer an extra pickup of mixed paper products for businesses in the city on April 21, Mayor Sheila Dixon's administration said yesterday. Dubbed "Clean Your Files Day," it is the first time in years the city has offered an extra paper pickup for businesses. The service is intended to encourage paper recycling on the day before Earth Day. Mixed paper products include phone books, newsprint, folders, mail and cardboard. "You clean it out, and we'll pick it up right at your place of business," Dixon said.

The place for junk mail is no longer the trash can; it's a brown bag.Anne Arundel County expanded its weekly curbside recycling program yesterday to include nearly all kinds of paper, not just newsprint and cardboard.Magazines, catalogs, books, cereal boxes, gift wrap, office paper and envelopes are some of the paper goods that can be diverted from the county's landfill near Millersville to the recycling market.The change is not costing the county anything because its recycler, Browning-Ferris Industries, is paid by the household, not by the variety it picks up, said Beryl Friel, county recycling manager.

Homes for Life Coalition meeting The Homes for Life Coalition of Howard County will hold its annual meeting from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday at the Bain Center, 5470 Ruth Keeton Way. Refreshments will be served. The nonprofit organization, founded in 1999, works to make homes more easily lived in and visited by people with disabilities and the elderly. Homes for Life, which educates consumers and those in the building industry, promotes the incorporation of barrier-free "universal design" (UD)

Baltimore County's curbside recycling effort, slow to get started, is now more than half complete, despite an unsettled market for recyclable goods.Some 28,000 households in neighborhoods such as Greater Rosedale and Stoneleigh/Wiltondale began curbside recycling in November -- the largest monthly expansion in the county's 3-year-old recycling program.So far, 84,000 of the county's 200,000 single-family homes get curbside recycling service in a variety of forms as the county works to develop a model for its final effort.

Baltimore will offer an extra pickup of mixed paper products for businesses in the city on April 21, Mayor Sheila Dixon's administration said yesterday. Dubbed "Clean Your Files Day," it is the first time in years the city has offered an extra paper pickup for businesses. The service is intended to encourage paper recycling on the day before Earth Day. Mixed paper products include phone books, newsprint, folders, mail and cardboard. "You clean it out, and we'll pick it up right at your place of business," Dixon said.

Two more small recycling collection programs are set to begin in eastern Baltimore County.Starting Friday, the county's private collector will pick up mixed paper from 1,300 homes in the Highpoint-Kenwood area on the last Friday of every month.This collection includes newspapers, magazines, phone books, mail, writing paper and cardboard. Paper should be tied in bundles or placed in brown paper grocery bags. The area covered is inside the Baltimore Beltway and south of Interstate 95 along Golden Ring Road.

The first phase of a uniform countywide curbside recycling program in Baltimore County begins next month when more than 10,000 households from Overlea to Perry Hall go to a schedule of one trash collection and one recycling pickup a week.By July 1, 1995, all 200,000 single-family and townhouse residences in the county will have the same "one and one" curbside recycling schedule. About 2,300 residences in the first-phase area now have some sort of recycling program.County Executive Roger B. Hayden, who announced the first-phase location Friday, said that after two years of experimenting with various schedules, "one and one" proved to be the most cost effective.

Two months ago, Baltimore City altered its garbage collection routine. One of the two weekly general pickups was replaced with a recyclable material pickup day. Mixed paper is collected one week; glass, metal and plastic containers stuffed into blue plastic bags are collected the next.During the first two weeks of May, 294 tons of mixed paper and nearly 94 tons of glass, metal and plastic containers were collected. The amount of paper gathered during that time period translates into saving 4,994 trees, according to Kenneth J. Strong, the city's recycling coordinator.

Baltimore County launched a new phase of its rapidly expanding curbside recycling program yesterday by beginning a pilot project in Relay that substitutes a pickup of mixed paper and yard waste for one of two weekly trash collections.Instead of having two trash pickups a week, Relay residents will have what county officials are calling one-plus-one curbside recycling collection: one day for trash and one day for recyclables. Early yesterday, County Executive Roger B. Hayden kicked off the project by donning a bright orange jumpsuit and spending 45 minutes helping crews pick up recyclables in Relay.

ROCKVILLE -- Montgomery County's ambitious recycling program is back on track, just one week after Executive Douglas M. Duncan declared it dead at the hands of "crazy" environmentalists and the County Council.A beaming Duncan, flanked by members of the council, announced the terms of a new contract with Office Paper Systems of Gaithersburg that would help the county meet its goal of 50 percent recycling by the end of next year."We can now move forward," said council President Isiah Leggett, who brokered the deal after Duncan's outburst at a news conference last week.

The place for junk mail is no longer the trash can; it's a brown bag.Anne Arundel County expanded its weekly curbside recycling program yesterday to include nearly all kinds of paper, not just newsprint and cardboard.Magazines, catalogs, books, cereal boxes, gift wrap, office paper and envelopes are some of the paper goods that can be diverted from the county's landfill near Millersville to the recycling market.The change is not costing the county anything because its recycler, Browning-Ferris Industries, is paid by the household, not by the variety it picks up, said Beryl Friel, county recycling manager.

Howard County has relaxed its procedures for recycling cardboard in response to residents' complaints.Residents now may set out up to 20 pieces of flattened cardboard without bundling them. Cardboard formerly had to be tied or taped together by residents. The new policy took effect Jan. 1."People were calling in saying it was too difficult to tie up the cardboard," said Linda Fields, manager of the county's recycling programs. "We're just trying to make it easier for them."Residents seeking to recycle more than 20 flattened cardboard boxes or pieces of cardboard still must tie or tape the stacks.

Harford environmental officials last week gave the County Council a glowing progress report on recycling efforts in the county, including evidence that the county has exceeded state minimum requirements.Robert Ernst, recycling coordinator, told council members that the county recycled an average 25.36 percent of its waste in 1994. That is 5 percent more than the state requires.The Maryland Recycling Act of 1988 ordered each county with a population of more than 150,000 to develop a plan to reduce its solid waste stream by 20 percent through recycling by the start of last year.

Take a second look at that junk mail you're throwing away with the trash: It might be worth something -- to Howard County.The demand for the waste paper that the county collects from homes for recycling has increased so much that a local paper mill, Simkins Industries in Catonsville, has agreed to pay the $300,000 or so a year the county used to pay to process paper for shipment.The agreement, effective Jan. 1, means that the county no longer will have to pay the $18.61 a ton it had been paying Browning-Ferris Industries to bale paper at its Elkridge Recycling plant.

The first phase of a uniform countywide curbside recycling program in Baltimore County begins next month when more than 10,000 households from Overlea to Perry Hall go to a schedule of one trash collection and one recycling pickup a week.By July 1, 1995, all 200,000 single-family and townhouse residences in the county will have the same "one and one" curbside recycling schedule. About 2,300 residences in the first-phase area now have some sort of recycling program.County Executive Roger B. Hayden, who announced the first-phase location Friday, said that after two years of experimenting with various schedules, "one and one" proved to be the most cost effective.

In South Seattle, where I used to live, recycling was a breeze. Newspaper, steel cans, tinned cans, aluminum cans, bottles of every color, magazines, mixed paper, junk mail and cardboard? I tossed them together in a huge cart on wheels that got emptied, curbside, once a month.The only minor inconvenience was that the cart would fill up prematurely, obliging us to slink down the alley in the wee hours looking for neighbors with emptier bins. We eventually figured out that the city was happy to supply us with a second cart, and all was recycling bliss.

A Baltimore County Council committee asked the county executive yesterday to look into weekly curbside recycling, but county administrators said it may be too expensive and will require further study before they reach any decisions.County Executive Roger B. Hayden unveiled a recycling plan Nov. 4 that was criticized for not going far enough to promote or mandate recycling.The plan calls for expanding curbside collection of mixed paper to 55,000 homes by next July and offering curbside collection of mixed paper and lawn waste to half of the county's 282,000 homes by 1994.

Baltimore County's curbside recycling effort, slow to get started, is now more than half complete, despite an unsettled market for recyclable goods.Some 28,000 households in neighborhoods such as Greater Rosedale and Stoneleigh/Wiltondale began curbside recycling in November -- the largest monthly expansion in the county's 3-year-old recycling program.So far, 84,000 of the county's 200,000 single-family homes get curbside recycling service in a variety of forms as the county works to develop a model for its final effort.

Susquehannock Environmental Center, a non-profit recycling station near Bel Air, will begin accepting mixed paper on Tuesday.Used paper products, including magazines, junk mail, cereal boxes and egg cartons can be dropped off at the center. Susquehannock is at 700 N. Tollgate Road near Harford Mall, just off U.S. 1.The center will continue to accept used newspapers and certain grades of office paper, including computer paper.Susquehannock officials said paper products should be separated by mixed paper, office paper and newspapers.