We wish you Peace, Love, and Joy this Holiday Season and throughout 2018!
Recently Keep Kingwood Green received a proud partner certificate from Houston Mayor Turner for our BOPA High Awareness Campaigns. The City and Councilman, Dave Martin, offer residents an opportunity twice a year to bring excess paint, oils, anti freeze, batteries, scrap metal and appliances to the Kingwood Metro lot for responsible disposal and recycling. The most recent BOPA, as the collection is called, was held on December 16th after being canceled in October because of Harvey cleanup. About 300 residents took advantage of this latest collection. We are always happy to publicize the event and help the City with the collection of these items that should never go to the landfill. We don’t have the results at this point, but at the April BOPA, 32,000 pounds were collected.
Thanks to you, we are reducing waste and toxins from being buried in our local landfill. Prevention is better than remediation! The next BOPA will be in the spring. You can join our mailing list to be informed about all recycling opportunities in the Lake Houston area. Go to our web site, https://keepkingwoodgreen.org/contact-us/ and click on “subscribe to our newsletter”.
Our Goal for 2018: Only a few villages in Kingwood do not offer curbside recycling. It is our goal to have convenient recycling for all in the area. While the City offers weekend recycling at the Metro lot, we know that driving there each weekend discourages many residents from recycling all that they could. It is easy just to throw aluminum, paper, plastic and cardboard in the trash can, but, that does not make it right. Once it goes to the landfill it is gone forever! Recycled goods can be used over and over. If you do not have curbside recycling, let us know. We will be happy to help you with information you can discuss with your HOA board. That board makes the decision on recycling and all your trash services.
Can you give us a hand? Keep Kingwood Green is a 501-c-3 all volunteer non-profit organization. While we have few overhead expenses, our effectiveness to advocate for and educate about recycling is limited by our finances and the number of volunteers we have. If you have ever attended an event and noticed that all cans and bottles are going into a trash container, and said, “What a shame, somebody ought to do something about this.” Well, maybe you are that somebody who could join our group and work on this project. We do event recycling but are limited by volunteers and funding. Call us! Every non-profit is asking for money this time of the year. We won’t ask you, but if you sent a few dollars to our PO Box, we sure would spend it wisely.
If you are like the Opperman household, you probably have received numerous cardboard boxes the past few weeks from relatives, Amazon, and others. It takes trees or recycled cardboard boxes to make all these boxes. I prefer using recycled boxes instead of cutting another tree. Flatten the boxes and put them in a recycling bin. Please do not throw them in a bin without flattening them. It takes a lot of energy to transport a box full of air to the recycling plant. It is much better to have a truck full of cardboard.
Electronics: Everyone, it seems, got new electronics as a holiday gift. Don’t forget to recycle the old “stuff”. Compucycle spends the first Saturday of every month from 9 AM to 3 PM at the Kingwood Metro lot collecting tons of this stuff for recycling. On December 2nd they collected almost 15,000 pounds. Take yours there on January 6th and it will be responsibly recycled. www.compucycle.net Check this web site for what they take.
Finally, how about that Christmas Tree? If you put your tree out with the trash, it will likely go to the Atascocita landfill. While it provided you with joy for a few weeks, there are better things to do with it then send it to the landfill. Personally, I put ours out in the back yard for a few months. It adds life and color to the yard. By March it is starting to turn brown and lose those needles that did not fall on the carpet when it was taken outside. At that point I mulch the branches and cut up the rest with my loppers. Tucked under an existing pine tree in my wooded area, it will decompose and feed the soil and the nearby trees. Not everyone can or will do this, but if you hauled it in from Lowes or another retailer, you should also be willing to haul it out to be shredded and recycled as mulch. The City of Houston provides bins near the currently closed Kingwood Library. They will accept trees there from 12/26 until 1/15/18. There may be other ways to reuse that tree. Please don’t send it to the landfill!
Comments, Questions? hal@keepkingwoodgreen.org or go to our web site at: www.keepkingwoodgreen.org. We are always happy to answer your questions.
We wish you a Happy New Year (full of recycling)! With your help we can truly keep Kingwood green as well as all the surrounding areas!