Our speaker last week was Victoria Acevedo, the Education Outreach Coordinator for the Balcones Resource Center. Victoria joined Balcones Resources in 2015 and was promoted to Education Coordinator after working in Balcones’ Corporate Headquarters. Her passion to involve and teach the Austin community about recycling shifted her into a role within the operations team. She works alongside the sales and marketing team to promote best recycling practices, educates the public on recycling topics, and creates educational content for all of Balcones’ social platforms.
Since 2012, Balcones Resources has had a partnership with Austin to process residential curbside recycling. Victoria showed us pictures and a video of their facility and discussed how recycling materials are processed. Materials are shipped to other recycling facilities to be converted into new products. They have domestic partners to recycle their materials. Some interesting facts -- 80 tons of cardboard processed each day. 3 tons of tin cans are recycled each day. It takes 450 years to decompose plastic bottles. You can recycle – paper, newspaper, cardboard, plastic bottles, aluminum and tin cans and glass bottles. Items should be dry and clean of liquids. Victoria described “wishcycling,” which is tossing things that you hope can be recycled but can contaminate the recycling process. She also described how “tanglers” can get caught in equipment and it can take hours to clean the screens. Victoria talked about different types of plastics and what is recyclable. Labeled No. 1- 7, but not all are recyclable. Nos. 1 and 2 are best for recycling. Victoria told us about the importance of recycling. It keeps products out of landfills and can create new products out of the recycled materials. Victoria left us with the six R’s of sustainability – reduce, refuse, recycling, rot, repair, repurpose. Let’s all try to all practice those in our daily lives.