NewsBits

By Editorial Staff, Resource Recycling

Election day last week found voters in San Francisco overwhelmingly rejecting efforts to break up Recology's 80-year monopoly on waste and recycling collection. Proposition A — which would have required residential and commercial trash collection to be split into five separate parts and disallowed any one company from holding all of them — was struck down by 76 percent of the vote.

From The Plastics Blog on Plastics News: Multi-platinum genre-defying rock band Radiohead's set at this year's Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival included an LED display featuring 14,000 recycled PET bottles.

Swapping not selling: The Swap-O-Matic is a fun reuse idea from a Parsons School of Design student project. The vending machine is designed for users to trade items for other items — bus passes, clothing, art or poetry. You get a credit for placing an item in the machine and are charged a credit for taking an item.

A pilot sign recycling program in Oregon drew the praise of Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber. Following the first phase of the program, 500 aluminum street signs were stripped and refaced, and the program has garnered a 41 percent savings for the Beaver State's sign budget.

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