Kohl's Cares for Kids and the environment

We went to Kohl's last Saturday and I noticed that they also have a Plastic Bag recycling bin at the store. The bin looks like this in case you want to bring your plastic bags for recycling while you're there shopping for good deals.

Plastic bag recycling bin

On top of the recycling bin, I found a flier about Kohl's commitment in helping to keep our environment clean. The flier also suggests a few things a customer can do in order to help.

While at the store, I also found an interesting book (see link below) at the Kohl's Cares for Kids area. It is one of their items for their Kohl's Cares for Kids program and I bought one. I just glanced at a few pages of the book but haven't read it entirely. I got it for only 5 dollars, which is a steal and I am hopping I may learn some other ways on helping to save our environment. But the other reason why I bought the book is that the Kohl's Cares for Kids program donates 100% of the net profit to support children's health and education initiatives nationwide. Ah, I just shot two birds with one stone... just a figure of speech. (No birds or animals were harmed while writing this post.) 


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Plastic Bag Recycling Bins - Home Depot and Wawa

A couple more stores/businesses that provide bins for plastic bag recycling.

Home Depot stores can be found around the U.S. and they also have presence on other countries. According to their website, "The Home Depot has 1972  convenient locations throughout the United States (including the territories of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands), Canada, China and Mexico."

Home Depot Plastic Bag Recycling Bin

Wawa stores can be found in the Northeastern side of the U.S. (portions of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia). It's a convenience store similar to 7-Eleven but they also have Gasoline Stations.

Wawa Plastic Bag Recycling Bin

Pathmark (recycling and reusable bags)

We dropped by a local Pathmark supermarket near our house and I found a plastic bag recycling bin in the store. Pathmark stores are in the Northeastern side of the United States and most of their stores are in the states of New York, New Jersey, Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware.

Here is what the plastic bag recycling bin looks like. It's similar to what I found in Staples and Lowe's.
Pathmark also offers reusable bags for 99 cents each and they have several designs as shown below. I found their reusable bags sturdy as compared to other reusable bags. It also appeals to nature lovers since the designs have plants and animals on them.

Recycling at Staples

Last March, I wrote something about UPS Recycling and one place you can recycle it is at Staples. I received a comment from one of the readers that you need to bring a printout of the APC announcement to be able to avail the free UPS or battery recycling at Staples. They used to charge $10 per piece and the free recycling promotion ends on September 30, 2009.

I went to a local Staples store last week and found out that they also have recycling bins for cellphones, pager, handhelds and plastic bags.

Cellphone, pager or handheld recycling bin

Plastic bag recycling bin

While at Staples, you can also check out their reusable bags. Here's what it looks like.

Plastic Bag Recycling drop-off at Lowe's and ACME Markets

Here are a couple more of plastic bag recycling bins that I found at local stores in my area.

Shown below is the Plastic bag recycling bin found at Lowe's.

This is the bin that I saw at a local ACME store.

ACME is part of the SUPERVALU, Inc. chain of stores. According to their website, they have more than 2,500 stores (Albertsons, bigg's, Bristol Farms, Cub Foods, Farm Fresh, Hornbacher's, Jewel-Osco, Save-a-Lot, Shaw's/Star Market, Shop 'N Save and Shoppers). You might find a plastic bag recycling bin on a store near you.

Plastic Bag Recycling drop-off at Safeway

We dropped by Safeway a week ago and we saw that they have a recycling bin for Plastic Bags. We have a couple of Safeway stores in my area. Both stores used to be Genuardi's but it was renamed about a year or two ago. Genuardi's is also owned by the Safeway company.

I am not sure where else Safeway is big. We have visited California (in the San Francisco Bay area) before and saw several stores out there. I checked their website and I found out that they have 1,775 stores across the United States and Canada. The store count includes the following stores: Vons, Randalls, Tom Thumb, Genuardi's and Carrs.

Here's what the recycling bin looks like.

I had to take another picture because my son wanted to be part of it.

Recycling at IKEA

I have seen recycling at work at IKEA stores and I was only able to take pictures of their recycling programs about a couple of weeks ago. IKEA has been promoting recycling and reducing waste throughout their stores.

One of the things they eliminated is the use of plastic bags. If a customer wanted a plastic bag, they will be charged 5 cents for it. This was started last March 15 and the proceeds on the first year of this program are donated to American Forests (a non-profit conservation organization). The customer is also given an option to buy a reusable bag for 59 cents as an alternative to the plastic bags.

Below are the recycling bins for plastic and paper that you will see throughout the store.
IKEA also has a recycling bin for Aluminum Cans, Glass Bottles and Plastic Bottles.
They also have a recycling center where you can drop off Bulbs (Compact Flourescent, Incandescent and Halogen) and Batteries (L.I.O., Alkaline and N.I.M.H).
For more information regarding IKEA's program, please visit their website.

(Disclaimer: I am not an employee of IKEA and I do not own any of their shares. The details above are for informational purposes only.)

Plastic Bag Recycling

Plastic bags can be recycled and brought back to the store where you got them. Most of the plastic bags that we have at home come from the grocery stores. If you examine the labels on the plastic bags, it is most likely that it has a note that says "Please return to a participating store for recycling." Below are plastic bags from Walmart and K-Mart that shows this note at the bottom of each bag.

Should you decide to recycle your plastic bags, look for bins that look like this. To find a drop-off location near your area, visit Earth911.com or PlasticBagRecycling.org