National Recycling Day coming this Friday

It is a common problem people face every day in Polk County: along the roadside in ditches, or the grass medians, there are scattered trash and wrappers leftover from stops in the drive thru at fast food restaurants.

Whenever volunteers scour local streams for the Rivers Alive event in late September annually, they find their fair share of aluminum cans and plastic bottles that have washed into the creeks.

One way Keep Polk Beautiful wants to ensure this doesn’t keep happening is encouraging everyone to stop and think a moment about what they’re throwing away with National Recycling Day coming up on November 15.

“We’re encouraging everyone to take part,” Keep Polk Beautiful Executive Director Randy Cook said. “It’s not just about taking the pledge. It doesn’t take much to make sure that items like plastic bottles and old newspapers don’t end up adding more trash to our landfill that could be reused everyday.”

This is the third year that Keep Polk Beautiful has taken part in National Recycling Day. This year, Cook said that t-shirts are being handed out to students in Cedartown and Rockmart High School chapters of Keep Polk Beautiful, who have volunteered to get people to make a pledge to recycle on Nov. 15.

“We want people to think about recycling. In this county, it is simple as saving aluminum cans,” he said. “It’s easy to do a little something to keep our community beautiful.”

Recycling items at home is as simple as keeping separate bins or bags for various items that should stay out of the landfill. The county’s convenience centers provide recycling bins for aluminum, plastics, newspaper, cardboard and more.

“You can recycle in this county, and we can all take a step to do it together,” Cook said.

Residents are encourage to log onto https://americarecyclesday.org/ today to take part in National Recycling Day.