App of the Month...iRecycle

It seems like everywhere you look businesses, schools, etc are trying to be more environmentally conscious. Even Cumberland is trying to improve its carbon footprint by placing recycle bins throughout campus. However, if you do not live on campus it can sometimes be difficult to find places to recycle. This installment of "App of the Month" helps with finding different recycling locations (wherever you are, and whatever you have to recycle!) with iRecycle!

Let's say you are wanting to find out where you can recycle all of the cereal boxes that you have collected over the semester.  To get started when you open the app your screen will look like this:

You will notice that the next screen has quite a few options available. It has everything from cars to hazardous materials to everyday household items available as options to recycle. Since cereal boxes are paper - that's what we will select.

The next page shows all of the paper categories that are available for recycling.  They are arranged alphabetically to make it easy to find.  Cereal boxes are near the top of this list (if you do not see exactly the item you are looking for, you can click a similar item).

This app will then find any location around you that allows for recycling of the item (or items!) that you are wanting to recycle.  It will show the location closest to you.

Once you select the location that is closest to you, the screen will show you a lot of information about the recycling place.  It will show their address (which is really important!), phone number, hours of operation, if there are any restrictions, etc.

This app is also great for finding articles that deal with recycling, diy crafts, etc.

If you aren't convinced that recycling paper or cereal boxes makes a difference, read some of these facts (from www.recycling-revolution.com): 

	Recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees.
	If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year!
	If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save about 25,000,000 trees a year.
	If you had a 15-year-old tree and made it into paper grocery bags, you'd get about 700 of them. A busy supermarket could use all of them in under an hour! This means in one year, one supermarket can go through over 6 million paper bags! Imagine how many supermarkets there are just in the United States!!!
	The average American uses seven trees a year in paper, wood, and other products made from trees. This amounts to about 2,000,000,000 trees per year!
	The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years.
	Approximately 1 billion trees worth of paper are thrown away every year in the U.S.
	Americans use 85,000,000 tons of paper a year; about 680 pounds per person.
	The average household throws away 13,000 separate pieces of paper each year. Most is packaging and junk mail.
	In 1993, U.S. paper recovery saved more than 90,000,000 cubic yards of landfill space.
	Each ton (2000 pounds) of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4000 kilowatts of energy, and 7000 gallons of water. This represents a 64% energy savings, a 58% water savings, and 60 pounds less of air pollution!
	The 17 trees saved (above) can absorb a total of 250 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air each year. Burning that same ton of paper would create 1500 pounds of carbon dioxide.
	The construction costs of a paper mill designed to use waste paper is 50 to 80% less than the cost of a mill using new pulp.

 There are tons of places to recycle just in the Cumberland University area, so imagine the possibilities of recycling while you are away from home.   Hopefully this app of the month helps you become more aware about how easy it is to recycle and what a difference you can make by recycling!