LiveGreen leaders are excited to announce the new recycling bins — provided by a grant funded by the Nebraska Environmental Trust — are now in place at Village Pointe. Here’s some background on the bins:
- Tall or short green bins for mixed plastic and metal.
- Both of these bins will hold both metal and plastic, comingled. The plastic that goes in must be rigid — the number doesn’t matter, but the plastic must hold its own shape. Pop bottles, plastic trays, frozen lunch plates, yogurt cups all can go in. Plastic bags, saran wrap, cellophane, bubble wrap cannot.
- Items need to be emptied of food and liquid prior to placing them in the bin, but they don’t need to be super clean. Not every bit of food needs to be out or off, but the bulk should be removed. You can use the napkin you ate with to get the excess out and call it good.
- Clean patient care/work-related items can go in the bin as well. Examples include saline bottles, plastic jugs, etc. Tubing, items that have had patient fluids on them (even if they normally go in the trash), or items that look like medical waste cannot be placed in the containers. If you are not sure if it looks like medical waste, please consider it trash until you confirm with LiveGreen@unmc.edu.
- Lobbies have stainless steel “triple bins.” They are all attached as one unit, but have three distinct bins: paper/locked/slot opening; landfill/square opening; mixed plastic and metal/round opening.
If you see your Environmental Services workers, please thank them! This is a big change for them and they now have more containers and more work to do. They have willingly taken this on and are happy to help recycle! Also know that recycling bins aren’t emptied until they are three-quarters full. This helps with efficiency but also decreases the number of plastic bags we have to use, an unfortunate side effect of recycling.
LiveGreen knows other locations are recycling on their own and would like to see this change, too. LiveGreen is working on it.