ALTOONA – Altoona Regional Health System will hold its third annual Earth Day event on Friday sponsored by the Go Green Committee.
The committee has partnered with Burgmeier’s Recycling Center to give employees a way to de-clutter for free and help the environment by bringing in 50 pounds of recyclable paper products from home.
As part of its green initiative, Altoona Regional has been using reusable sharps containers. That effort alone has kept more than 32,000 pounds of plastic and almost 2,500 pounds of cardboard out of landfills and prevented more than 19,000 pounds of CO2 emissions in the past two years.
These numbers equate to not burning 989 gallons of gas or not using 363 home barbecue grill propane tanks.
In 2012, Altoona Regional recycled 699,000 pounds of material that included cardboard, paper, aluminum and steel cans, and glass and plastic bottles.