Bet you a nickel you didn’t know this….

Folks, check this out–some things you may or may not know about recycling. Make sure your good ‘n’ green efforts aren’t for nothing.

When recycling paper, take this to heart:

• You don’t have to remove staples, plastic windows, spirals from notebooks. These get strained out when the paper is turned to pulp
• Remove tape if you can, because it tends to gum up the machines, but it’s ok if there is some left.
• No dirty or greasy paper (very important!!). This means no napkins or tissues (even if they are only slightly dirty)
• Do NOT recycle pizza boxes!!! Even IF the pizza box IS clean, they will still assume it’s dirty and toss it just the same, and possibly the whole container as well!
• Waxed, composite or laminated paper is generally not allowed, like milk cartons, fast food wraps, drink boxes. Note: Some places accept drink cartons, but I wouldn’t recycle it if it means getting milk all over clean paper and ruining it for recycling. I cannot emphasize enough that if that happens everything will get tossed!
• Thermal paper cannot be recycled – this means fax paper, but I also think it means supermarket receipts, which are increasingly printed on it are not recyclable also.
• Flatten cardboard boxes – again, if they are not flattened, they can be rejected.

Who knew?? Fantastic stuff. Of course, it will only matter if we all start paying more attention to what we do with our waste.

[These tips--and other great ones for glass and plastic--were found on confessions of a closet environmentalist, my new favorite green website.]