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When we were in STJ in April, we had a wonderful surprise. For several years, Island Green Living, www.islandgreenliving.org, has been a wonderful St. John resource providing recycling of aluminum cans; education about conservation, preserving the reefs and use of safe sunscreens; providing the first ever municipal brush chipping site where we can buy mulch at great prices, and transforming the USVI into a net zero waste, carbon-neutral territory. To our knowledge, there is no other resource like this on either St. Thomas or St. John.
There was an interruption after the hurricanes, but they restarted their operations and aluminum collection shortly afterward. Conservation minded residents and guests could drop off aluminum cans in receptacles at the Island Green Living site on Gift Hill Rd just off of the Centerline road. As an added bonus, you could do a little shopping at their wonderful ReSource Depot Tuesdays through Saturdays. We’ve found several treasures for the Andante there and we’ve found a place where our gently used household items and small appliances could find a new home.
Well, in April, we found that they had started taking plastics (#1,2,5)! We don’t use a lot of aluminum cans, but we do have plastic containers for laundry, soda bottles, shampoo and take-out. It hurt to have to put all of these items in the trash, knowing they would end in the landfill. I was so excited to find I could finally save all of these items for recycling. They don’t even require that the cans and bottles be separated, only that they are cleaned of anything that can attract insects and animals and lightly rinsed.
Then, when we came back to St. John in late August and went out to drop off our trash, we got another wonderful surprise. Recycling receptacles are now located at the trash bins next to the basketball courts in town, on Gift hill; at Connections in town; and at Love City Mini Mart in Coral Bay. It’s still important to clean out the containers and lightly rinse them, but they should be in a trash bag if you are dropping them off at the receptacles off site of Island Green Living. Now, conservation minded residents and guests don’t need to save up their recyclables for a time they might be going by the Island Green Living site on Gift Hill Road. They simply need to bag their aluminum cans and plastic and drop them off when they drop off their trash. What a great service!
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