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Recycling Your Waste

brycesteiner

New Member
A topic like this comes around once in a while and instead of bringing up a topic from 2010, I thought I would bring it up from a slightly different POV.

I am bringing this up because I feel we are wasting quite a bit of material that gets thrown in the garbage. I think about what I would like to do with it every single time I cut another piece off, and that is to recycling it, but I don't see any place that takes it. I goes in the landfill. I'm sure this stuff takes a long time to disintegrate.
Banner material must take longer than forever to breakdown.

1. What do you do with your offcuts and waste?

2. Does any recycling facility in your area take vinyl and banner material?

3. Suggestions that have helped you with recycling that you would like to share.

4. What can be done safely with the waste inks from eco-solvent machines?

My way of being more responsible in the business and with waste is to produce less garbage. Measure twice and cut once. Make sure that I try to sell sizes that are more applicable to our material sizes by asking customers if the size is something they need or if they just "guessed" at a good size. It saves on cutting and making sure we make the most of it.

At the end of the day, we still waste that goes in the garbage that I would like to eliminate. Paper doesn't bother me near as much because it breaks down so quickly and turns back into good compost. This is not the case with vinyl.

Thanks for your input.
 

reQ

New Member
Honestly, i don't really worry about recycling of my waste vinyl/banners etc. I have much more to worry about. We have industrial size garbage bin beside our building that we use for all garbage/waste.
 

GaSouthpaw

Profane and profane accessories.
You might ask your local municipality about recycling banner material. After all, it is a type of plastic.
We recycle whatever we can, but banner material- not so much. We just don't enough banners to warrant the space needed.
 

Typestries

New Member
Banner is super easy to recycle. We have a large rubbermaid can outside with a sign on it "free tarps" we load that up with all of our scraps and off cuts, and they are gone in no time. Painters, boat people, firewood people, that all love em.

A lot of our coro scrap goes to local framing shops to become backer boards.

We were recycling a lot more but the company no longer services our area.
 

jfiscus

Rap Master
The only thing that we have really been able to recycle successfully are our plastic roll shipping caps/stands. (the little plastic squares with plugs for core ends)
A local school is taking them for recycling into plastic benches. Their program was originally targeted to get milk caps as they are the same plastic type; but they take these too and so far we've given them enough to make 3 benches!

Most other products we use here are vinyl with adhesive, and paper backer with silicone liners so the materials are not easily recyclable as they are "contaminated" with other material groups. I am really surprised that the solvent ink cartridges are so hard to recycle easily.
 

Gene@mpls

New Member
My renter got a recycling dumpster and we may have to have it picked up twice a
month instead of the current once. Paper waste, cardboard, cans, bottles most
plastics (it is one sort). It really takes the load off our once a week dumpster and
way cheaper- $40 a month I think. If we fill our dumpster too full and the driver
reports it it is a $50 overage charge.
 

Billct2

Active Member
We have two dumpster, garbage and recycle.
We make an aluminum run every couple months.
The one thing that I was surprised that the recycler wouldn't take in the dumpster was coro.
They also rejected vinyl liner.
I was just telling someone how much crap we produce to letter a truck compared to when I started.
Back then all you had left over were a few dirty paint cups and pallettes.
 

gabagoo

New Member
I keep all the large cardboard boxes vinyl and laminate come in and try to send it back out as packaging. When it builds up I then cut them down and drive about a mile from here to a municipal recycling centre.

I save all my cores and one of my suppliers takes them back to reuse.

I will say that since getting a digital printer the waste factor has probably doubled if not more.
 

Gene@mpls

New Member
What kind of plastic (#) is vinyl and banner material? The end caps too on the containers?

Banner material is pvc. Coroplast is polypropylene.

Gaba- my supplier will not take 54" so we cut them into 24 & 30" and they are happy to take them. Gene
 
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