Recycle Your Stuff (not at the MOA)
I figure since the Mall of America electronics recycling event closed down early due to an incredible volume of stuff, there are still plenty of Twin Citizens looking to do the right thing and recycle their garbage instead of just pitching it. Had I been turned away, I’d probably still be driving around with that stuff in my trunk until I figure out what to do with it.
One option is to go to The Recycling Center, punch in your zip code, and let it draw up a list and a Google Map with the recycling facilities near you.
Another good option is to go to your county’s drop off/recycling center. [Hennepin] [Ramsey]
I think it would have made a lot of sense for the MOA to direct people whose items they could not accept to the Hennepin County drop off center in Bloomington. Maybe they would have been quickly overwhelmed as well, but it’s a few less people giving up all together in frustration.
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I’ve made good use of Henn. County’s drop-off site in Bloomington over the years. Unfortunately, it’s located in an off-the-beaten-track spot, in an industrial area, so it doesn’t get noticed by the general public like it would if it were along a main thoroughfare.
A nice thing about that place is they make a point of trying to distinguish between what can and can’t potentially get re-used; reusable stuff gets put out on shelves as freebies. I’ve found some still-serviceable consumer-electronics items there. The facility imposes sensible limits on how often you can snap up that sort of stuff, to discourage anybody from being a hog about it, or trying to gather up a bunch of stuff for potentially profitable re-sale. (The items get tagged with stickers that say the recipient is forbidden from re-selling the items. But the stickers wouldn’t be that hard to remove.)
For a lot of county residents it can be quite a drive to either of the county’s two drop-off sites; so the county also does annual localized drop-off events in residential neighborhoods, such as at a public-school parking lot.
When I’m going to make the trip out to the Bloomington location I try to check first with my neighbors, to see if they too have anything that should get hauled out there. Seems wasteful for everybody to be making their own separate personal trips out there.
When you get there they have you show your ID, to prove your residency within the county, and then several workers nicely swarm your vehicle to transfer whatever you brought onto carts used during sorting and in some cases testing of the stuff. If you’re someone who tends to leave various junky stuff in your car’s interior and in the trunk, it’s best to be careful about that, so the staff doesn’t mistakenly also take stuff that you’re not intending to drop off. It can be hard to prevent that, when there’s just one of you and there’s three or four of them quickly unloading your vehicle.
That’s great info. Thanks!