san mateo rotarians donned hard hats, masks & vests on April 30th to join Burlingame Rotarians for lunch at the offices of rethink waste in San Carlos followed by a tour of the shoreway environmental center just off 101 in redwood shores.
joe LaMariana (a san carlos rotarian!), the executive director of Rethink waste, gave an informative overview of the role rethink waste plays as a joint powers agency of 11 local governments who have joined together to provide waste management for recylables, green waste, and garbage for peninsula residents.
Ever wonder about what happens to the contents of the green, blue & black bins you put on the curb every week?
This pile represents a day's collection of green waste. It will be converted into compost or put in tanks to produce a slurry that then will go to a local sewage plant to assist in producing methane. Waste arriving at the processing center must be handled and taken away as quickly as possible to protect the health of workers and the public. The Shoreway staff suggested putting your food waste in brown paper bags rather than green bags.
Here's a day's worth of blue bin contents, aka recyclables. As they arrive by truck, the contents are dumped into a huge pile and then loaded onto a conveyor belt web to be separated and prepared for recycling or landfill.
Heavier items drop to belts below while lighter items continue on the belts until they finally meet a team of humans who separate out any stray garbage from the recyclables.
All landfill items go by truck to Ox Mountain Landfill in Half Moon Bay.
The mounds of processed recyclables are shaped into huge bales for transport and further processing.
The bales are sold to domestic and interna-
tional markets and then sent to ext-erior recycling processors.
In this era of on-line shopping, the top recycling money maker is.....
cardboard!
here's a question for you.
How long does it take to break down a plastic bottle in landfill?
At the May 8th meeting Chris Eckert gave a great Thought of the Day from Lessons of Life by Jim Rohn. The topic? Ants!
Here are Rohn's 4 reasons why we should think like ants:
1. Ants never quit.
2. Ants think winter all summer.
3. Ants think summer all winter.
4. Ants think "all you possibly can."
In other words, never give up, look ahead, stay positive, and do all you can.
Wise words!
In case you missed this great write-up on Rotary by Jon Mays in Friday's Daily Journal, click on the link below.
