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Environment

Christmas Light Recycling

bins loaned by the city for people to drop off holiday lights
Trinity Lutheran Church in Moline
bins loaned by the city for people to drop off holiday lights

Just in time for the holidays, a church in Moline will accept strings of lights that don't work or that you no longer want. Actually Trinity Lutheran Church has been recycling holiday lights for about eight years, but usually collects the most at this time of year.

another hard to recycle item, batteries
Trinity Lutheran Church in Moline
another hard to recycle item, batteries

Spokeswoman Karen Neder says it's the local chapter of the TerraCycle company that accepts lights, crayons, batteries, and various kinds of packaging.

"Not everything can be recycled in our blue bins, so we take stuff that is not recyclable in your blue bins like toothpaste tubes and toothbrushes and floss containers and corks."

She sends in the waste materials then receives some money in return, raising money for the church and its programs.

Neder says members of the congregation strongly support the program.

more items you can't put in curbside bins
Trinity Lutheran Church in Moline
more items you can't put in curbside bins

"To spread the word about climate change, and about plastics in our oceans, and being able to re-use and reduce and then recycle those things that we can't re-use and reduce. It's become a real ministry for us."

The old lights from Christmas and other holidays are taken to Alter Metal Recycling which recovers the copper wiring. In recent years, she's taken two carloads a year of holiday lights to be recycled.

Trinity Lutheran Church, with collection bins outside, is located at 1330 13th Street in Moline.

Environment
A native of Detroit, Herb Trix began his radio career as a country-western disc jockey in Roswell, New Mexico (“KRSY, your superkicker in the Pecos Valley”), in 1978. After a stint at an oldies station in Topeka, Kansas (imagine getting paid to play “Louie Louie” and “Great Balls of Fire”), he wormed his way into news, first in Topeka, and then in Freeport Illinois.