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America Recycles Day—Do Your Part

lmoffat
Adventurer A

Today is America Recycles Day—a nationally  recognized day dedicated to celebrating recycling, a way we can all do our part to get involved with sustainability and to protect Mother Earth.  Although today is a day to encourage others to recycle and buy recycled products, it’s not just about doing something right for one day out of the year.  Reduce, reuse, recycle—this is a mindset we should all consistently maintain to reduce our carbon footprint 365 days out of the year.  America Recycles Day is simply one day when we can all stop and focus on why it’s important to recycle.

At Southwest Airlines, we know the right thing to do is to reduce, reuse, and recycle.  In November of 2009, we launched a more robust co-mingled onboard recycling program that builds on the success of our already established recycling program at our facilities.  Our waste diversion percentage doubled just one month after our launch.  We know that environmental decisions can also make good business sense, and this is just an example.  By diverting waste from the waste stream into the recycling stream, we save real costs to our bottomline, because we pay for each trash pickup.
 
Our vision for the future is to provide more recycling opportunities at all of our 69 locations.  Currently, the majority of our locations that offer the opportunity to recycle are equipped with open-top containers.  Our recycling programs at Chicago Midway and Sacramento have been a tremendous success and continue to gain efficiencies.  These two Stations have been converted to compactors, which allow for more efficient collection of recyclables.  To read more about our environmental efforts, check out the 2009 Southwest Airlines One Report.

Get involved in your community and make a difference—find out if there is an event happening in your neighborhood here:  http://earth911.com/america-recycles-day/.  You can also join the conversation on Twitter by using the #americarecycles hashtag.  Happy America Recycles Day, everyone!

 

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