In an effort to educate the Baton Rouge community on recycling, the Louisiana Master Naturalists of Greater Baton Rouge and Friends of Hilltop Arboretum hosted a Discover Nature event focused on recycling.

The presentations were hosted on Tuesday from 6:30 to 8 p.m, and these organizations remind us that the cleanliness and sustainability of our environment begins with us.

Keep Tiger Town Beautiful

Jennifer Richardson, the founder of Keep Tiger Town Beautiful, spoke about the work her team of Litter Warriors do in the community to help make Baton Rouge litter-free.

“We want to get our city back,” Richardson said. “The way to do it is to have an army, and I need a bigger army.”

KTTB is completely backed by volunteers. By sourcing all of its resources through donations, the organization is able to relieve the costs that Baton Rouge officials would have to delegate tax funds to accomplish.

The volunteers in KTTB clear the streets of all kinds of litter, including dangerous items like weapons, ammunition, needles and illegal substances.

However, safety is a huge priority to the organization. Many precautions are taken before they enter areas that were previously inhabited by drug users. Police accompany the volunteers to do an initial sweep of the area, along with a drone that scans for thermal heat. This ensures that there are no people actively living in the area, nor are there any immediate dangers.

From here, volunteers can enter an area and completely transform the space within hours. Still, many densely littered areas require a lot of manpower to get the job done.

“We’ve got everything you need,” Richardson said. “All you have to do is wear rubber boots and gloves, and bring your own water bottle. There’s no obligation. We don’t care if you come once or twice or 100 times. We’re just happy to see anybody that comes out.”

Outside of clean ups, the organization runs many initiatives to prevent litter from returning. Once such program is its public trash can service, in which they maintain 163 garbage cans throughout Baton Rouge.

Anyone looking to join KTTB on its service events can visit the Facebook page for the group’s events calendar. No registration is required, and everyone is welcome.

Republic Services of Baton Rouge

Andres Harris, the manager of municipal sales at Republic Services of Baton Rouge, a recyclable sorting facility, visited the event to explain how Republic Services processes its intake, along with the do’s and don’ts of recycling.

“We don’t recycle, per se, the material,” Harris said. “We separate all these commodities. We bail them, and then we ship it to the markets and to a mill that eventually processes it, and they recycle. We process 2,500 tons a month.”

He explained that the materials they receive go through a three step sorting process.

First, humans do a pre-sort, doing a preliminary separation and removal of non-recyclables. Then, the materials are put through conveyor belts equipped with optical scanners, sending sharp puffs of air to push the materials into the right places. To end the process, the products are sorted again by humans, ensuring no materials have ended up in the wrong place.

This sorting process is done so meticulously because one piece of material in the wrong place can ruin an entire batch of recycled material, zeroing out the effort it took to get everything sorted and to a recycling plant.

Harris also pointed out that materials should not be placed into a bag or container all mixed together. Doing so slows down the sorting process and increases the chances of materials ending up in the wrong location since all of it must get separated in the end. Instead, you should place your items loose into a recycling bin.

Additionally, Harris said that plastic bags cannot be processed through their services. Instead, items like grocery bags, Ziploc bags and other plastic bags should be dropped off at local supermarkets, such as Walmart, which typically have plastic bag recycling programs.

Finally, he explained that food residual can also be a barrier to proper recycling. He urged everyone to do a quick rinse of soiled recyclables.

“One of the things we want to encourage the people [to do] is to stop and make sure the stuff you are throwing in the recycling bin is not bad and fairly clean,” Harris said. “‘I don’t want to put that mayonnaise jar in the dishwasher’… Just put water, put the cap, shake it, rinse it and that’s it. At least it’s not food residual.”

Republic Services offers a variety of educational resources on its website dedicated to recycling education. There are lessons specifically created for classrooms, helping teachers share recycling with their students.

“When I get schools on tours, I tell the teacher, ‘Don’t wait for Earth Day to talk about recycling,’” Harris said. “Talk about recycling at least once a week.”

Glass Half Full

Ricky Ostry, the commercial sales representative from Glass Half Full, explained the organization’s efforts to recycle glass bottles. By dropping off empty glass bottles, businesses and community members are diverting glass from reaching landfills and providing the resources to help rebuild coastlines.

“We all know glass comes from sand,” Ostry said. “What can we do with that? Louisiana is rapidly losing a massive amount of its coastline on a daily basis… We collect upwards of 300,000 pounds of glass every month, and we crush it into a beach-like sand at our warehouses.”

For those living in Baton Rouge, the LSU Hilltop Arboretum recently became a drop-off location for glass bottles to be recycled. The bottles arrive at the Glass Half Full facility where they will get crushed in an Andela pulverizer, a large machine specifically designed to turn glass into sand.

The granules of glass are then sifted through Rotex screeners to separate the pieces based on size and remove any debris. Most of the glass is crushed to a sand, becoming smoother than the sand you would find on a typical beach.

However, some of the pieces are so small that they become dust-like. Sand this small is bagged to be used in disaster relief, a method commonly used to prevent flooding damage. The goal is to use as much of the glass as possible.

“Very little waste product in this entire process,” Ostry said, “but things that end up in the waste basket here are labels, which get removed through this crushing process, limes in Corona bottles and crawfish [shells] of course.”

The sand created is then transported to a coastal restoration site. To ensure that this entire process is safe and beneficial for the environment, Glass Half Full works alongside Tulane University in a program called ReCoast. This program conducts research, checking for any signs of negative impact.

Currently, Glass Half Full is working on rebuilding an island in the Bayou Bienvenue wetlands, an area that was heavily eroded, destroying an entire forest.

“Our fantasy is to regrow this forest and have it be this sustainable place that is also protecting us from environmental disasters,” Ostry said.

Capital Area Corporate Recycling Council

Nicole Fitzgerald, the director of resources at Capital Area Corporate Recycling Council, explained the organization’s efforts to ensure electronics are recycled, refurbished and redistributed into the Baton Rouge community.

“We work at the intersection between environmental stewardship technology and community impacts,” Fitzgerald said. “In Baton Rouge, people know us as the place that recycles computers. We’re an electronics recycling facility, but we aim to do more than just recycle them downstream.”

Electronics have become essential for everyday life. This means there is an increase in items such as laptops, cell phones, wires, desktops and hard drives floating around the community, potentially heading to the landfill.

CACRC steps in here, providing a space for people to turn in their old electronic devices to be processed and potentially reentered into the community.

What stands out about this nonprofit is it is the only organization in Louisiana to be certified as a R2 Certified e-waste recycler. This means that they are recognized as the only location that ensures all data is completely wiped from turned-in devices, an important step that protects previous users’ privacy.

With confidence in the nonprofits’ ability to protect its donors, people are able to send in electronics without fear. CACRC then begins the process of taking the devices apart, separating all the different types of materials.

“Electronics carry a lot of plastics, metals, lithium batteries,” Fitzgerald said. “Things that we don’t want to put in our landfills, our water sources. They go back into our soil, our air — all around causing heavy amounts of pollution.”

When items are turned into CACRC, they are checked for functionality. Working devices are wiped and prepared for redistribution. Broken devices are broken down into pieces, which are either used for refurbishment or sent to be processed for recycling.

The electronics that are redistributed into the community from CACRC are used to open doors for community members.

“We hold the belief that digital access creates opportunity, economic mobility and stability,” Fitzgerald said. “We believe in recycling with purpose and connecting with impact.”

The organization has connected in this way, changing the lives of those who have received electronics from them.

“I had one email one day that was from a mom that said her husband had lost his job,” Fitzgerald said. “Their car is broken. They had a child, and she had an opportunity to accept a remote job, but the only barrier she had to accepting the job was not having access to a computer with Windows 11. Could we help? Yes ma’am, we can help you.”