Recycling, and Pulled from the Recycling

Today I visited the new Ramsey County Environmental Center, which brings all of my county's disparate recycling and related services into one building. It has a large meeting room that can be used for Fixit Clinics, which are very popular, and a Reuse Center, where people can pick up free paint and household chemicals that have been dropped off in the hazardous waste area:

The paint is tested to make sure it's still in usable condition, and sometimes remixed to usable amounts. They also have 5-gallon sizes.

These are perfectly good materials that would otherwise have to go into a landfill or toxic waste dump. On the Miscellaneous shelves I saw Goo Gone, ammonia, and wallpaper remover... and I wasn't looking closely.

The Environmental Center also takes rechargeable batteries to get them where they need to go, as well as all the parts of the recycling stream that are hard to figure out (weird kinds of metal that can't go out in the weekly bin, plastic bags, and electronic waste like TVs and computers). They also accept the regular recycling you can get collected at home. And the compostables that are collected at a number of other sites around the city and county.

I dropped off a bunch of paint, some metal (including a couple of old pans whose nonstick coating was eroded and a steel lamp that no longer works), and a collection of defunct rechargeable batteries.

While we were there, we were shown the staff office area, where they keep a collection of fun things pulled out of the recycling. Believe it or not, here are a few items they've got in their credenza-top display:

Probably my favorite, from personal nostalgia, was this GE Show ’N Tell Phono Viewer. We had one just like it in the late 1960s, except ours was orange instead of red. I think my mom bought it for us when she had a job as the school librarian for two years when I was in first and second grade, so about 1965.

There's a slot on the top right where you put a film strip in, which advanced synchronously with the record. The film strip we had that I remember most clearly was about Persephone and Hades, and it set my interest in Greek mythology from then on.

According to this gizmo's Wikipedia page, they were made in Utica, N.Y. (buy local, mom!) and were in production from 1964 through the 1970s. The original cost was $29.95, which is a bit over $300 now (!), with each film strip/record going for $.99, about $10 now. 

It's funny that whoever turned the Show ’N Tell in to the Environmental Center included the record with it, since the machine does not work, according to the staff.

 

This bundle of letters was leaning up against the Show ’N Tell. It was found in the paper recycling.

I didn't get to examine the letters, so I'm not sure exactly when they're from, but I would say roughly turn of the 19th century. (Stamps were $.02 from 1885 to 1932, except for a brief period during World War I.) But the lack of street address and a year in the postmark argues for earlier than later in that time period, I would think. 

The young woman who was showing us the display told us she is not able to read the cursive handwriting on the letters.

This Ampro speaker may be from the late 1950s. Here's one from 1958 for sale for about $200.

They also had this tin of mints with a name that seems not quite ready for prime-time. U All No? You All Know? I guess that's what it means. 

They were made in Philadelphia, and the trademark was registered in 1906. There's a smokestack there with the name in bricks! According to that site, during World War I, production of the air-tight tins was repurposed to make boxes to hold fuses and detonators on their way to Europe.

As I suspected, this box has some resale value, like $10–15. (I must really like vintage tins, because here are some of my past posts on tins: here and here and here and here).