Chris McCullough

Chris McCullough, Douglas County Recycling Guru exhorts the 3 R's

Chris McCullough

Books, books, and more books! Every house, home, school, business, and non-profit organization has books. There are textbooks, cookbooks, novels, and even books to balance the leg of your kitchen table. Little books, big books, pretty new books, and ugly old books all abound. But what do we do with all these books?

Chris McCullough

I receive at least 3 calls a week asking what is the best way to dispose of prescription medication safely and securely. Most people are worried about private information being collected or what liabilities are placed upon them should someone scavenge their medications from the trash. What to do is a query that many citizens ask themselves but are not provided an answer on the bottle.

Chris McCullough

The Douglas County landfill is filling up faster than expected. With growing consumerism and a no-fee solid waste system, the citizens of Douglas County are increasing the volume of material entering the waste stream every year. We are keeping up a good recycling pace however, 30% and holding. That means we put about 100,000 tons of waste into the landfill and 30,000 tons are recycled. Not bad considering you can drive to the transfer station and throw away your garbage and no one “makes” you recycle.

Chris McCullough

In Roseburg, Winston, and Winchester Bay there are community recycling depots supported by the citizens, local government, and our recycling partner Sunrise Enterprises. It was an experiment to be sure, but wouldn’t it be neat to have something similar in Sutherlin?

Chris McCullough

This coming weekend at the Douglas County Fairgrounds is the annual Home and Garden Show put on by our local Home Builder’s Association. There you will find many new things to improve your home and surroundings. What you may not know is that there will also be a lot of opportunities available to see new products and practices on display showing you how to save energy and money. Green building materials, energy efficient fixtures, landscaping with native plants, and water conservation just to name a few.

Chris McCullough

Every school and nonprofi t organization out there is working hard and doing their best to raise funds for their programs; selling candy, coupon books, even collecting recyclable material for resale. Yes, that’s right, there is money in recycling. The community needs to be aware of good sources of recycling dollars as well as unscrupulous ones as well.

Chris McCullough

Consider this year instead of cutting and hauling away all your grass clippings, mulch the grass back into the soil instead. This idea is called “Grasscycling”. This is nothing new for some folks, but when we harvest our grass and take it away to the dump or for recycling, we are taking away precious natural resources from our own properties. Your grass needs the old clippings to nurture the roots and promote water retention in clay soils or water runoff in sandy soils.
After the development of suburbs in the 1950’s, and lawns became all the rage, there was a notion that mulching led to thatch. This could not be further from the truth. Mulching promotes a healthy lawn, saves resources, and saves energy (you make less trips to the landfill).

Chris McCullough

Unlike the folks at Dell who had attorneys, suppliers, accountants all elsewhere and shipped their money out of Douglas County, small business owners reinvest their income into our local community by spending their dollars here. That means the dollars created here stay here and flow through the community. Thus building a stronger local economy.