Closing the Loop Hey Smart Recyclers, Have you heard about the circular economy?  We’ve seen this phrase all over the place lately – in articles about fast fashion, videos on climate action, and sprinkled into the latest corporate sustainability campaigns. But what does it really mean? To put it simply, a circular economy (also called circularity) means…

All the Waste We Do Not See Welcome back, Smart Recyclers!  As many of our loyal readers will recall, our last newsletter, It Isn’t Waste Until It’s Wasted, had us thinking a lot about our stuff. To recap, we focused on what happens to our stuff “downstream,” after we put it in the trash. We explained Massachusetts’ limited…

It’s Not Waste Until It’s Wasted Happy Spring, Smart Recyclers! ☔🌱🌷 If you’re anything like us, you’ve been doing some spring decluttering this month. For our team, it’s clothes we have (finally) accepted will never fit, toys our children have outgrown, kitchen gadgets collecting dust in our cupboards, and books…so many books! We don’t know about…

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words Happy February, Smart Recyclers! This month, we would like to draw your attention to our humble, yet informative, Smart Recycling Guide. If you haven’t seen it before, the Smart Recycling Guide (SRG for short) is our go-to guide to what can and cannot be put in your home…

Recycle Smart This Holiday Season! Happy holiday season, Smart Recyclers!   Did you know that Americans generate 23% more trash between Thanksgiving and New Year than any other time of year? That’s a lot of extra trash! Luckily, there are things we can do to reduce the amount of trash we generate this time of year. Read on…

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle-Palooza! Hey Smart Recyclers, It’s our favorite time of year! Each November we like to set aside some time to connect with you, our followers, and this year is no exception. Please join us the week of November 13 for three inspiring and informative waste-related webinars. This is a time for you to ask…

Reframing the Waste Hierarchy Let’s play a quick round of trivia. Clue: This phrase is an alliteration, made up of three waste reduction strategies in order of impact. If you answered “reduce, reuse, recycle,” you’re right! The ubiquitous “Three Rs” (aka, the Waste Hierarchy) is our go-to phrase when we talk about waste reduction. While…

Recycling’s “Magic” Numbers Quick poll: You know the little numbers on the bottom of plastic containers? Which ones are okay to put in the recycling bin? If you said “1s and 2s,” we hate to break it to you. That was a trick question! Rest assured, there’s good reason for our collective confusion about those…

How Are You Celebrating Earth Month? “Every April 22 I think to myself, ‘I wish I had signed up for an Earth Day clean-up this year…’”   – Anonymous  If that sounds like you – or if you just like to plan ahead – this newsletter is for you. We’ve put together a list of activities from across…

All About Plastic We get a LOT of questions about plastics here at Recycle Smart MA, and we understand why. There’s a lot of confusion about which plastics can go in the recycling and which can’t. There’s also a fair amount of confusion about why some plastics are a yes and others are a no. And finally, there’s…