Waste Management of Orange County

Resolve to recycle
Waste Management offers programs that make the recycling resolution easy to keep

ORANGE COUNTY, Jan. 15, 2007 - Customers all throughout Orange County know that Waste Management provides convenient curbside recycling programs, but the company is also involved in other projects that help people maximize their recycling activities and keep the resolution to recycle more in 2007. To help encourage recycling resolutions, Waste Management supports several programs, including Freecycle and e-waste recycling at its Orange County recycling centers.

“It’s easy to recycle, and you have more recyclable items around your house than you may realize,” said David Ross, Senior District Manager of Waste Management of Orange County. ”In addition to the traditional newspapers, bottles and cans, we also want to encourage people to recycle batteries, cell phones and computers or electronics. All of these items can be recycled and, in fact, some states mandate the recycling of these items.”

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, recycling has grown drastically over the past two decades – 50 percent of all paper, 34 percent of all plastic soft drink bottles, 45 percent of all aluminum beer and soft drink cans, 63 percent of all steel packaging and 67 percent of all major appliances are now recycled.

“Waste Management is the nation’s leading waste hauler, but we are also the largest recycler,” said Ross. “We want to make it as easy as possible for our customers to recycle items that have become a major part of our waste stream. As a corporation, we lead by example, and we hope our customers and neighbors in our communities will resolve to join us in our recycling mission this year.”

One program in particular that can boost recycling resolutions is Freecycle, which is a grassroots community movement and nonprofit organization, based on the web, hosted by Yahoo, and made up of individual city groups that promote waste reuse among their members. Members have the opportunity to give and get great things for free, in an effort to keep unnecessary waste out of landfills. When you want to find a new home for something – whether it’s a chair, a fax machine, piano or an old door – you simply send an e-mail offering it to members of your Freecycle group.

Membership in Freecycle is free and open to all communities who want to participate. To sign up for a Freecycle group, interested individuals, nonprofits or community groups simply need to find the appropriate region on the www.freecycle.org Web site.

For customers looking to safely recycle old cell phones, Waste Management accepts these and other “electronic waste” at its Orange County recycling centers in Irvine and Orange:

Sunset Environmental Transfer Station
16122 Construction Circle West
Irvine, CA 92606

Orange Transfer Station
2050 N. Glassell St.
Orange, CA 92865

For hours of operation and other service details, visit www.wmorangecounty.com/services/transfer.asp.

Statistics indicate that there is great demand for recycling programs of this type. The United States has more than 219 million cell phone users, according to the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, and research by INFORM concluded that as of 2005, 500 million cell phones in the U.S. were estimated to be stockpiled by consumers waiting for the opportunity to recycle them. INFORM also found that in a single year, 100 million cell phones, weighing approximately 50,000 tons, are replaced by users.

“As technology rapidly develops and changes, we are glad that the same is true for recycling technology and techniques,” said Ross. “Waste Management is proud we can offer these different recycling programs to help us maintain our commitment to environmental stewardship and our customers maintain their personal commitments to keeping their communities clean.”

Waste Management, combined with its wholly owned subsidiary WM Recycle America, recycled enough paper in 2005 to save more than 41 million trees. The company handles 5.8 million tons of commodities each year, and our total recycling efforts save enough energy to power 1.6 million households.

To help kick-start your resolution to recycle, the following household recyclable materials are collected in our community:

For more information, visit www.wmorangecounty.com.

Waste Management, based in Houston, Texas, is the leading provider of comprehensive waste management services in North America. Our subsidiaries provide collection, transfer, recycling and resource recovery, and disposal services. We are also a leading developer, operator and owner of waste-to-energy and landfill gas-to-energy facilities in the United States. Our customers include residential, commercial, industrial, and municipal customers throughout North America.