Daylight Savings: Clean Up and Green Up Recycle, Repurpose and Reuse event March 13, 2011

Daylight Saving Clean Up and Green Up, a free community-wide recycle, repurpose and reuse event, put on by Michigan Green Consortium from 9am until 3pm on Sunday, March 13, 2011, will be held at a brand new location in Traverse City.

The event, held twice a year the morning following the time change, encourages local area residents to bring difficult-to-recycle items, items that have salvageable components or materials and items that can be repurposed or reused to one central location for collection. The March 13 event will be at 280 Hughes Drive, the former Tower Automotive facility, and new home to American Waste’s solid waste material handling facility.

In keeping with the organizers of the Clean Up and Green Up event’s pledge to cover the entire spectrum of recyclable items, sponsor partners Bill Marsh Automotive Group and LC Tire join the lineup of recycle companies at the March event prepared to accept up to 400 tires. Since we have a limit of 400 tires that we are prepared to accept, we’re requesting that only 4 tires be dropped off per vehicle, and recommend residents turn out early to be successful in recycling them.

In conjunction with their Energy Smart Program™ headed up by Manager of Communications & Energy Services Jim Cooper, Traverse City Light & Power will also be on site that day ready to rebate its customer base that choose to retire inefficient (yet still working) air conditioners or dehumidifiers and bring them to the Clean Up and Green Up event. Units don’t have to work but they must power up to qualify for the $15 rebate, and customers should bring copies of their bills in order to receive credit.

Best Buy will be at the event accepting television sets that are 32” or less in size with a further condition that no more than 3 per vehicle are dropped off at a time. ReStore will accept extension cords, video games and systems, large appliances that are in working condition to put them back into use, while We Recycling will collect freezers, refrigerators, air conditioners and dehumidifiers and evacuate the refrigerant free of charge so that they may be broken down into their base components. Odom will accept a broad range of clean and reusable building products, including lumber, clean carpet and rigid insulation. Home Depot will take in fluorescent tubes, power tool batteries and compact fluorescent light bulbs. M and E Small Engine Service will retrieve any outdoor gas-powered equipment such as chainsaws, snow blowers, trimmers or mowers and repair them for reuse, while Rifkin will accept those that are no longer repairable, along with auto batteries, large appliances that are at the end of their service days and anything comprised of ferrous and non-ferrous metals. Plastics numbered 1 through 7 will be accepted by the joint efforts of American Waste and Bay Area Recycling, who will also take in Styrofoam and other metals.

Goodwill will accept clothing, books (no phonebooks please), reading glasses, computer desktop units and monitors as part of the Dell take back program, while TC E Waste that specializes in electronics recycling, will accept batteries, laptop computers, computer peripherals such as printers and scanners and just about any small appliance that was once powered by electric. GT ProFILE’s Shredmonster will munch away on confidential files, documents and cancelled checks, while Team Elmer’s will grind your toilets, sinks (absent the workings), porcelain, ceramic, concrete and asphalt back into usable substrate material. To top off the benefits that the community-wide free event offers, a reusable shopping bag will be distributed to the first 700 attendees, compliments of Goodwill, Oleson’s and American Waste.

Maps of the new site location and a comprehensive list of acceptable items and the sponsor partner that will receive them are available at the Daylight Saving Clean Up and Green Up event website, www.cleanupgreenup.com. Sponsor and member companies are also offering coupons for download at the event website, as well.