Recycling has become big business
By: John Saccenti
Like everyone else, we had a lot of old newspapers and tin cans when I was a kid, all of which we threw in the trash.
Just like everyone else.
That is until my neighbor started coming around asking for our newspapers. She was a Girl Scout and was collecting them, I think, to raise money for her troop. Eventually we just started stacking them in the hall closet.
I’d watch as she carted them off in her wheelbarrow, wondering what she did with them. What was this "recycle" thing she kept talking about? Could I too collect newspapers and make money? Enough to buy a dirt bike?
Turns out I could not enough for a dirt bike, and certainly not enough to even "buy" my parents’ permission to get a dirt bike but I could make something. From what I remember, it was a nickel here, a dime there, maybe a few cents somewhere else, not enough to keep my interest.
But, eventually, recycling became big business. The very newspapers that cluttered trashcans and garages were reused for, get this, more newspapers. Cans? The same thing. Soon, plastic, and metal and even that oddly alien substance known as Styrofoam could be dropped into specific bins and recycled and resused as boards for boardwalks and benches and computer housings and insulation and a lot of things I can’t even imagine.
It seems the recycling thing, dragged from the shadows of flower power hippies and on to our front lawns in the form of yellow buckets and blue bins, was catching on, and South Brunswick (where I grew up) is one of those helping to push the issue.
While we all recycle, usually without even trying, and we do a fairly good job of it, Nancy Paquette, the township’s recycling coordinator, wants to do more. Specifically, she wants to help businesses do more by showing them that recycling isn’t only required, but easy and cost effective.
On Sept. 26 at the South Brunswick Courtyard by Marriott, representatives from more than 20 area businesses, and officials from the township, state and county, got together to talk about just that. They talked about how the size and type of Dumpsters can pay instant dividends, sometimes saving thousands of dollars in trash collection fees. They talked about how properly sorting recyclables can cut down on the amount of garbage pickups, and possible fines for not recycling.
Also on hand were vendors who make it their business to help companies dispose of paper, and plastic, and those tricky, hard to figure out things such as printer cartridges and computers.
The differences between now and then couldn’t be more different. Gone is the gangly neighborhood Girl Scout and here were businessmen in suits. Others with Polo shirts tucked into jeans. Gone is the overfilled wheelbarrow and here are the high-tech answers to disposal.
But while the differences couldn’t be greater, there is at least one thing that remains the same if we want to stay "green," and keep recycling, we have to talk to the people who have the cans and newspapers. And sometimes that means going door-to-door.
John Saccenti is news editor for the South Brunswick Post. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].

