MECHANICSBURG – The Champaign County Peace Alliance, Goshen Garden Club, Champaign County Animal Welfare League and Mechanicsburg FFA sponsored recycling during the week of fair this year. Of the 20 boxes placed around the FFA Barns and Activity Buildings, 35 bags or about 250 pounds of plastic bottles and aluminum cans were collected and added to the recycling drop-off funded by the North Central Ohio Solid Waste District on U.S. Route 68.
This year’s fair recycling matched last year’s collection with very minimal trash such as food and paper compared to previous years.
It takes aluminum cans 200-500 years to decompose, according to the New York Department of Environmental Conservation. When aluminum is recycled, energy use is reduced 90 percent and air pollution 95 percent. Recycling one can could run a television for three hours.
Plastic bottles can take over 1,000 years to decompose. Approximately 88 percent of the energy is saved by producing plastic from plastic as opposed to plastic from the raw materials of oil and gas according to We Care Waste and Recycling in New York.
The groups thank Susan Helterbran of the Solid Waste District for supplying the recycle boxes and liners, Wayne Cook from the Fair Board for allowing the groups to recycle and JP Kent from Mechanicsburg FFA for setting up and collecting all the FFA barns and Arenas recycling. Thanks also to Steve Walters, who donates a trunk and Melissa Nott that helped drop-off the recycling at the end of fair this year.
