City of Ames, IA This Week in Ames, 30 May 2014

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From YouTube: This Week in Ames

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Learn more about single stream recycling through the Resource Recovery System.

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Hi welcome to this week in Ames I'm Susan gwiazda on today's show. We check in with the resource recovery plant.

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Guess to me is Lori handsome with the resource recovery plant Lori. Welcome to the show. Thank you good morning. Well, we're here at 110 center avenue just off lincoln way. Sometimes people don't know exactly where we are. What do we do here at the resource recovery plant? What.

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We do here at the resource recovery plan. Is we take almost all of the garbage from story county and we process it? Remove the metals and then turn the rest of it into a fuel that the power plant can use in their boiler system to create electricity for the city of.

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Ames and we're right fairly close to the power plant and next to the coal. Is it true that we reduce the use of coal through the use of garbage? Yes for.

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Every one ton of coal garbage that we burn we do not have to use a quarter ton of coal so.

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Really, it makes a difference over the course of the year, you're really reducing the use of coal. It does.

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It does by one quarter, were you reducing the use of coal so.

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You mentioned that you take all the garbage from Story, County and process it here. How do we do recycling.

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We recycle just by putting our garbage into one garbage, can that we all have the only thing that we don't want in the garbage, of course, is the glass but the paper, the plastic. The newspaper, the cardboard can all go right into the garbage, even tin cans and pretty much anything inside your house. So how do you get them out of the garbage? How do we get them out of the garbage?

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We just grind them all up, and then we have magnets throughout the system that take out all of the ferrous metals and at the back end we have magnets or systems that take out the non-ferrous metals and the rest then can basically become the fuel. So.

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Metals are extracted and recycled. Yes, the rest of the garbage taken over to the power plant and used as a supplementary fuel. Yes, so that works out pretty pretty.

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Nicely this does it does we are able to recover reuse, recycle. Seventy percent of the garbage from Story County in.

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This way now you mentioned not, everything is good for the garbage here in storey County, one of the things that we like people to remove from their garbage is glass. Yes,.

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And toward that end, you can take those to the bright, yellow, pins at the grocery stores and deposit your glass into those bins. They come here every Friday and we grind the glass up and sell it as blast material. Another.

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Thing you do here another service, provided that I'm not sure everybody knows about. Is you have a household hazardous waste program? Yes,.

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And that means basically anything in your house that says warning caution, combustible, flammable inflammable, toxic or poison. If you have any of those items such as oil-based paints, spa or pool chemicals, regular cleaning compounds your house, waste oil, lamp oil, hobby projects.

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By appointment on Wednesday afternoons all year long, what.

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About things like compact fluorescent light bulbs, tube.

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Fluorescents we want you to bring those down to us anytime, that you're out and about any time during our open hours will accept those no charge to make sure that they get properly recycled. So we can keep the mercury under control and the.

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Other question we get a lot is what to do with expired medications. You.

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Can wait for a drug drop off those happen in every community these days at least once a month, you can check with your local law enforcement to find out when those are going to happen, and you could put those your drugs in those drop off containers, then they will bring those to us on one of those after the event and we'll make sure that it gets over to the power plant to be used as fuel. So.

A

We discussed how to get rid of medications. What about sharks? We.

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Also have a sharps container on our tipping floor, so anytime you're out and about, and you have your regular red sharps container or a hard-sided containers such as a liquid detergent bottle. You can bring your sharp sand in those containers. Come on to our tipping floor, we'll send somebody over to unlock the larger sharps container for you to deposit your container, also at no charge now.

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One thing we just finished up with Memorial Day and we put out information saying that you could bring flags here that are no longer fit to fly. Yes,.

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This was a special weekend memorial weekend and folks had flags out all over the cemeteries and at their homes and as you're putting those away or we're getting those out and noticed that some of them were afraid or need replaced. You can take those this week up to the American Legion here in Ames on Main Street. There is our flag container in their doorway. You can deposit your flag and we'll make sure that they are all disposed of properly yeah.

A

You don't want to be putting those in your regular garble.

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Because that's just um it's desecrating the flag. We want to show our honor for all of the veterans that have given so much for our country and that container will be back at the plant for flag deposit through out the year. Okay,.

A

Great one other thing again: we're a 110 center avenue, tell us all about your hours and how to get hold of you. We.

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Are here from seven to three-thirty Monday through Friday Saturday's, eight to noon, and you can give us a call at two three, nine five, one, three seven and we'll be able to take care of any questions. You've got all right. Lori thanks for joining.

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Susan, the.

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Resource recovery plan has been serving the citizens of story county for 40 years, so congratulations to them on that milestone. Also remember if you want to find out what's happening in Ames over the extended fourth of July weekend be sure to check out Ames 150 calm for a schedule of events. Also, if you want to view channel 12 on your mobile device, you can do video streaming on your phone or tablet. Well, that's our show for today, thanks for watching and tune in next week. For this weekend, Ames.