Congratulations to the more than 24,000 people who participated in the Yuengling Shamrock Marathon, Anthem 1/2 Marathon and TowneBank 8k making this year’s race one of the best ever! Our friends at J&A Racing did a wonderful job organizing this year’s run! The Yuengling Shamrock Marathon is recognized by Runner’s World as an Official Green Race. Helping to ensure they stay that way TFC Recycling was on hand providing recycling containers for the hundreds of thousands of water bottles used by the runners. Congratulations again to everyone participated in The Shamrock Marathon! See you next year!
In January, TFC Recycling and the Virginia Aquarium joined forces to collect unwanted electronics.
More than 600 vehicles dropped off nearly 50-tons (100,000 lbs) of electronics during the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center’s second e-cycling drive. This event brought in five-times the amount of materials collected last year. With the help of TFC Recycling, 50 volunteers filled three semi trucks and two box trucks with unwanted electronics. Additionally, recyclers donated $100 to support the Aquarium’s Green Team, which organizes recycling events and beach clean ups.
TFC Recycling sponsors the Aquarium’s e-cycling events — collecting and processing the electronics free of charge to residents. This offers the public a convenient, safe and green solution to dispose of their e-goods. “We are a proud sponsor of this e-cycling event because it supports the Aquarium’s mission of conservation and helps the community to sustain its valuable resources,” says TFC Vice-President Michael Benedetto. “This is truly a win, win situation,” says April Strickland, organizer of the event and member of the Aquarium’s Green Team. “Not only can individuals safely dispose of their personal electronic equipment, but they can do so knowing that this recovers valuable materials, conserves virgin resources, eliminates waste in landfills and results in lower environmental emissions.”
An estimated 30 million desktops and 12 million laptops are trashed each year. That’s over 112,000 computers discarded per day!* Recycling electronics saves energy: 81% of a desktop computer’s energy use is in MAKING the computer, not using it.*
Still have items you wish to e-cycle? TFC Recycling will be teaming up with the Virginia Aquarium again in the fall. Thank you to everyone who volunteered and to all of the wonderful Virginia Aquarium and TFC Recycling Employees who helped make this the biggest and best E-Cycling event ever!
Suffolk Residents! This year Resolve to Recycle and make recycling one of your New Year’s Resolutions! TFC is helping you to make the commitment by offering one month of free service to Suffolk residents who sign up for one full year of service by January 31st, 2011. The City of Suffolk’s partnership with TFC Recycling makes it easy with their subscription based recycling service. This year commit to reducing the amount of garbage going to our landfills and finding it’s way into our oceans. Recycling is easy and just takes a few minutes every day. Sign up now for the special at http://www.tfcrecycling.com/suffolk/ because it ends January 31st, 2011.
New Customers:
*Sign up for one full year of service and receive one month of free service. You will receive just one bill for $132, instead of four quarterly payments of $36. Save Now! The special ends January 31st, 2011.
*Were you referred by a current recycling customer? If so, write their name in the referral line on the website contract and they’ll also receive one month free!
Current Customers:
*If you would like to pay for a full year of recycling, please call our customer service number at 757.543.5766 and request to pay for a full year.
*If you would like to receive one month free, please refer a new customer to us! Have the new customer write you in as their referral source when they sign up and we’ll credit your account to receive one month free! Referrals can not be called in, but must be placed by the new customer when signing up.
Bottle caps seem harmless, but they can be deadly to all sorts of animals. “The small pieces of plastic can really affect the animals, not just the sea turtles, but birds, fish, you know marine mammals, anything that’s out there and they can ingest it and get in trouble from it,” explains Christina Trapani with the Va. Aquarium’s Marine Animal Care Center.
Each week, volunteers sort bottle caps and take them to the Aveda store in Norfolk for recycling. The group took more than 100 pounds of bottle caps over on a recent trip.
Now, instead of having to ship the caps out, TFC Recycling is taking care of them. “We will take them to market and hopefully that will help reduce the carbon footprint and at the end of the day, we’re looking to help the aquarium, turn these bottle caps back into recycle bins that they can use,” says Ed Farmer.
Farmer says it’s really important to take the cap off the bottle instead of leaving it on when you recycle. “There’s a chance that it may not get recycled because there’s two different plastics,” he adds. TFC sends caps that cannot be recycled to a place where they will be used for energy.
The group also started a pilot program in October that involves 13 schools in Virginia Beach. Students and faculty are collecting bottle caps and helping sort them. Bottle caps are also being collected at the Princess Anne Library in Virginia Beach. If you would be interested in helping out contact Kathy Russell at 757-543-5766 – Sandra Parker, WVEC News- Channel 13.
Click on the link below to watch Sandra Parkers story of how Aveda, TFC Recycling and local schools are partnering up to make a huge difference!
Aveda, who partners with salons and spa professionals around the world, has joined Virginia-based TFC Recycling to institute a one of a kind bottle cap-reprocessing program.
The pilot program to collect caps from Virginia Beach school children was launched earlier this month. Bottle caps are currently not recyclable through local single stream recycling and are often found littering our oceans and area waterways.
“After seeing how damaging a bottle cap can be for our marine life, I contacted Aveda to see if there was a way to collect these caps on a larger scale,” says Debbie Thomas of the Virginia Beach Education Foundation.
TFC Recycling is helping Aveda with the logistics of the program. “We are assisting by providing logistical help in sorting, transporting and marketing the bottle caps,” says Ed Farmer, Vice President of TFC Recycling. “We hope to be able to close the loop by working with manufacturers to make recycling bins from the bottle caps,” adds Farmer.
The Virginia Beach Aquarium and Marine Science Rescue Response Team often rehabilitate animals that ingest the plastic. They currently work to collect caps and help educate the public on the harmful affects of bottle caps.
13 Virginia Beach schools are part of the pilot program. If your school or organization is interested in volunteering to help sort bottle caps please contact Kathy Russell at 757-543-5766.
If you have been saving your caps or are looking to begin, please visit one of the following locations to drop off your caps!
Virginia Beach pilot schools, include:
Bayside Elementary School
Corporate Landing Elementary
Corporate Landing Middle School
First Colonial High School
Landstown Middle
Lynnhaven Middle
New Castle Elementary
Pembroke Elementary
Plaza Middle School
Seatack Elementary School
Tallwood High School
Technical & Career Ed Center
Virginia Beach Advanced Technology School
• Lipton has zero-waste recycling down to a T || Virginia Pilot writer Linda McNatt talks about how Suffolk based Lipton Tea has attained the impressive zero-waste status. Lipton Tea estimates it has saved about $150,000 through their environmental efforts.
:: National ::
• Harris Teeter: Engaged Recycling || Harris Teeter has a new partnership with Engaged Recycling to recycle electronics. By recycling your electronics with Harris Teeter you will earn a Harris Teeter gift card and donation to the school of your choice.
• Terracycle Brigade Partners With Schools To Recyle Ziploc Bags || If you haven’t checked out the Terracycle website, you need to. They collect all sorts of things you can mail in and in return you will receive a donation to a charity or school of your choice. The Ziploc Bag program helps get those pesky Ziploc bags off the streets and into usable products. For each bag collected Terracycle will pay your school 2¢. In order to be on this particular brigade you must be a part of the school system.
• Lexmark assessment shows footprint reduced by 60% || A Life Cycle Assessment commissioned by the Lexmark print cartridge company revealed recycling toner cartridges reduce the product’s carbon footprint by 60%.
:: International ::
• Earth Island Journal, Spring 2010: Cash For Trash || This article is only available in magazine format. The article reports on how Brazil’s unemployed keep recycling rates higher than in the US. The catador (collectors) use hand pulled carts to collect trash, hand sort trash and deliver the recyclable material for sale. The writer gives an in depth comparison on the Brazilian and American recycling markets.
In 2008 Brazil recycled 90% of aluminum cans while the US recycles 54%.
In 2008 Brazil recycled 54% of their plastic bottles while the US recycled 20%.
In 2008 Brazil recycled 47% of glass bottles while the US recycled about 40%.
TFC Recycling would like to congratulate the Virginia Beach Convention Center for being the first convention center in the country to achieve LEED Gold certification for existing buildings. This achievement also signifies the VBCC as Virginia’s largest building to achieve this honor. They received the honor this morning at press conference attended by Virginia Beach Mayor William Sessoms, Jr. and Congressman Glenn Nye. The award was presented by Kimberly Lewis the Vice President, Conventions and Meetings & Greenbuild Conference and Expo.
TFC Recycling is proud to be a partner in the convention center’s sustainability initiative by working with the city of Virginia Beach to develop and successfully implement their recycling program. Special event containers are placed throughout the facility to allow for easy and convenient recycling by visitors. VBCC owns two compactors that compacts the commingled materials that are transported to TFC’s sorting facility.
From L-R: Lori Herrick, Asst Manager Business VBCC; Kimberly Lewis, VP, Conventions and Meetings & Greenbuild Conference and Expo; Ed Farmer, VP Business Development, TFC Recycling; Courtney Dyer, General Manager, VBCC
Today is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, and this year TFC wants to not only celebrate our beautiful planet, but also our local community, which has been working so hard to keep it clean!
Yesterday a member of our team, LeAnne Benedetto said, “we were a green company before ‘green’ was even cool,” and though she just might be right, we’re really excited to see everyone catching on and pitching in to conserve our environment.
Virginia Beach and TFC with the award
The city of Virginia Beach, which was the first community to partner with TFC for curbside recycling, was recently recognized for their efforts by receiving the 2010 American Forest & Paper Association Community Recycling Award. Virginia Beach recycled close to 23,800 tons of paper and paper-based packaging in 2009, which was more than 68% of all recyclables collected.
The 2010 American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA) Community Recycling Award was presented to the city of Virginia Beach in mid-April and the annual award recognizes outstanding community, business and school paper recycling programs across the country.
Congressman Glenn Nye said, “Families here in Virginia Beach understand how important it is to protect our environment through recycling, and we know that individual steps like recycling paper at our homes and businesses can have a huge impact. I’m proud that Virginia Beach has been able to set a strong example for the nation,” – and we’re obviously proud, too.
Chesapeake had a good green year as well, tripling their recycling volumes since February of 2009 after partnering with TFC. We collected 1,125 tons of recyclables from the Chesapeake recycle service big bin containers in February 2010, and according to city officials’ statistics, tonnage per month in February 2009 was only 308.
Today also actually marks a big day for Suffolk as the official announced deadline for the “Suffolk Sign-Up,” promoting the curb-side recycling program. We’ve had a great response and have even seen over 100 new sign-ups in the past few days, raising the numbers to nearly 2,000 households registered. Since it’ll take 2-3 weeks to evaluate the numbers, we still encourage residents interested to continue to sign-up – every signature helps!
TFC's last E-cycling event in Virginia Beach
Lastly, if you’re in York County, make sure you check out the annual Earth Day festivities going on at the Riverwalk on Yorktown Beach today from 10am-2pm. A TFC truck is down there right now, collecting electronics for the York County Electronics Recycling event. Bring any and all out of date electronics past the point of being reused (except televisions)!
Happy Earth Day, Hampton Roads, and keep up the great work!
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