Monthly Archives: May 2013

Cleaning Out Your Garage This Summer? Recycle, Don’t Throw Out

Summer is here and its time to clean out your garage. If your garage is anything like mine you’ve probably got boxes piled to the ceiling and you just want to get rid of that stuff. And if you don’t want to do it there is an entire mini-industry based around garage clean outs (click here to find out more about junk removal and professional garage clean outs).

But before you start hauling all your garage junk to the garbage STOP. Okay, now that we’ve got your attention, before you throw out the stuff in your garage consider donating to local thrift shops and charities instead. Why?

Donating Unwanted Items Keeps Them Out the Landfill

Donating items can keeps them out of the landfill and gives those items a second (and sometimes third and fourth) life. Less trash in the landfill means a better environment and less trash left behind for our kids and grandkids.

Donating Unwanted Items Helps Charities and Local Stores

Many charities depend on income brought in by associated thrift shops to fund their charitable efforts. Also charity thrift shops often provide dignity and employment to disabled individuals and provide valuable services to your community.

Donating Unwanted Items Helps You

Donations to charity can provide you with a valuable tax write-off. Make sure you ask for a receipt from your charity.

Be sure you check with your charity of choice or thrift shop of choice before donating. Many charities have rules about what they will and will not except (some don’t take appliances older than a certain date for instance). Also be aware that thrift shops don’t accept paints and other household hazardous materials. You may also want to ask your thrift shop or charity of choice if they have an “Items Wanted List” and no doubt some of the things you’ve cleaned out of your garage are on them.

Disaster Clean Up…

Leave a reply

Natural disasters can strike at any time, during any part of the year. In some cases you may have some warning, in other cases you may have no warning and no time to prepare. Once the immediate danger has passed you are often faced with a daunting task: disaster clean up.

The most important thing to remember when you are faced with a disaster clean up — whether flood, fire or tornados — is that you are not along. The American Red Cross can provide you help and support during a natural disaster. During major natural disaster you can find aid from FEMA and state governments.

Your insurance company should be able to refer to a disaster clean up service that can help you clean up and rebuild. Depending on your insurance your insurance company should pay for most of the cost of a disaster clean up.

Be Careful with Your Chemicals

Leave a reply

When you buy paint, or car wax, or a computer you don’t really think of those things as toxic or hazardous. Hazardous materials aren’t sold in stores right? I mean, as long as I don’t go around swallowing paint this stuff can’t hurt me right?

Items like used paints and cleaners do represent s potential source of harm to our environment. Think of a common scenario. Someone (we won’t say you because you wouldn’t do this) dumps a half gallon of paint down the drain after they’ve finished repainting t a room. That paint will go on to contaminate pipes, sewers, and possibly even drinking water for days or weeks. Motor oil that is just dumped out into the ground goes on to contaminate ground water, harming wildlife and plants. Even a computer that has been improperly disposed of can cause great harm by exposing both animals and people to lead and other contaminates.

So when you are dealing with household hazardous waste be careful. Make sure that you cap and store paints and cleaners properly. Keep them out of the reach of pets and children and away from heat sources that can spark a fire. When it comes time to dispose of these chemicals dispose of them properly.

There are many ways to dispose of household hazardous and e-waste. You can often trade-in small electronics for cash. You can take your household chemicals like cleaners, solvents, and paints to city drop off center or a hazardous waste disposal event. If you have a lot of hazardous materials to dispose of try calling a hauling service that specializes in disposal of household hazardous waste and chemicals.

How to Recycle Without a Recycling Center

Leave a reply

When people here the term recycling they think of recycling centers where people haul bags of cans or bottles to be recycled. But you don’t need to always use a recycling center to recycle. There are a lot of other methods beyond just hauling something to a recycling center. I used to work for a junk removal service and we found a million ways to recycle unwanted, unloved, or even broken items.

1. Donation

Donation to local charities and thrift shops was one of the main avenues we used to get rid of other people’s “junk”. Many charities and thrift shops have items they are actively seeking. So I kept in touch with a network of local thrift shops and when an item they needed sprang up in your junk truck off it went. You can do the same thing, and even get a nice tax write off for it.

2. Yard Sales

This is a time honored classic, but a time honored classic that works. When I worked at a junk removal service he used to have biannual yard sales where we sold items we had collected over the previous six months and sold them. In turn our company donated the profits to charity.

3. Creative Re-Use

My then girlfriend (now wife) was an Art Major with a quirky side. She showed me that many conventional household items we’d normal throw away could be reused for fun, funky house decorations when she took a blender and repurposed it as a vase.

Recycling is more about what you put in the blue bin. It’s a way of thinking about how you interface with the products you buy, the products you throw away, and the world around you.

What Junk Removal Services Do to Help Our Environment

Leave a reply

Junk removal services sometimes get a bad rep as just guys who throwaway and dispose of junk. But actually junk removal services do more to recycle and keep junk out of our landfill than most waste management companies. How?

Junk removal services recycle junk that would have been dumped in a landfill or worse still dumped on the side of the road. Junk removal services actually provide an alternative to illegal dumping. In major cities across the U.S. people have a tendency just to haul their junk and unwanted items to the nearest curb and leave it. Junk removal services take that junk and haul it away instead.

Junk removal services recycle junk that is hard to recycle. A junk removal service for instance can recycle an entire mattress. They send the springs to a metal recycler, any wood framing to a wood recycler, and even take the stuffing to a general recycler. They also recycle by giving useable items away to charity.

Junk removal services are actually the most environmental conscious form of waste management around today.

How Junk Removal and Hauling Companies Recycle

Leave a reply

Most of the time we don’t think of junk removal companies and junk haulers as environmentalists. We often see those junk removal dump trucks roaming around your neighborhoods in Los Angeles and think, ew, just another garbage truck. But in reality junk removal services in Los Angeles are spearheading the way for garbage recyclers. Most junk removal services in Los Angeles actually recycle a majority of the items they haul away.

When a junk removal company hauls away household or commercial junk they don’t take it to the landfill immediately. A good junk removal company sorts through all the household and commercial junk they collect, organize it, and then separate it.

Most junk removal companies recover some fairly useable items. Many are things like small appliances, or old toys, or even clothes that can be donated to charity. Many junk removal companies in Los Angeles support local charities and those charities’ thrift shops by donating useable items to those same thrift shops.

In cases where something isn’t in any condition to donate to charity junk removal companies can and still do recycle. Take a box spring mattress for instance. Junk removal companies can recycle the wood and metal springs. Sometimes they can even recycle the fabric.

On average junk removal services in Los Angeles recycle between 50% to 90% of the items they haul away. Junk removal companies are blazing the path towards a greener, more recyclable and reusable future.

Welcome to Green Planet Junk Removal

Leave a reply

We are the new Green Planet Junk Removal blog. This space will be dedicated to bringing you the best news and opinions from the world of recycling, trash removal, garbage disposal, and junk removal. We’ll mostly be talking about these topics in reference to the greater Los Angeles area.

Trash removal and disposal is a burgeoning problem for the United States. The average American produces hundreds of pounds of garbage and trash per year. This is true for every man, woman, and child living in Los Angeles today. If we don’t learn to control and reduce our trash output we will soon be a city, a state, a nation awash in trash.

So what can you do to help? To change the course of events so our children’s future isn’t buried under a mountain of styrofoam cups? You already know the answer. Reuse, reduce, recycle.

Reduce … your consumption. We don’t need half the items we think we need. We also can do without disposable cups, plates, and silverware. Instead of paper bags use reusable lunch bags. Instead of one time use plastic bottles, use multiple use stainless steel bottles that will last a lifetime.

Reuse … Before you throw something away, ask yourself, can I reuse it? Chances are the answer is yes. So reuse items like plastic bags more than once.

Recycle … Recycling is a lot easier today. Most of Los Angeles, including apartments, have a recycling program. Take advantage of these programs and recycle. You’ll be amazed at the things you can recycle.

These three simple Rs can help keep our city, the city of Los Angeles, clean and reduce our trash footprint, and preserve the Earth for the next generation.