Text Box: RESIDENTS TO GET CANS FOR SMALL METAL RECYCLING By Constance Rojas Macy Text Box: As some of you may already have read in The Washington Post and the Gazette, my brother, Tom Rojas, a General Contractor in Cabin John, recently spearheaded a recycling plan for Montgomery County residents to collect small scrap metal. The county currently does not recycle these items. A "metal recycle challenge" was held between Cabin John and Carderock Springs and less than eight weeks later residents had collected more than 33,000 pounds of metal. Examples of these metals were wire clothes hangers, bottle tops, and nails. Cabin John was the victor by collecting over 17, 000 pounds of metal! Tom and I hope that collecting items such as these will become a normal part of life, not a "special project" that "ends" on a certain date. Frankly, the purpose is to get people to become more aware and hopefully committed to recycling this particular category of items, which have long been thrown into landfills, as opposed to being recycled, since they are indeed recyclable. The main barrier in doing so is that the county will not pick up these small metals at curbside along with the other recyclables currently in our bins. Yet, the county will pick up large metal items such as appliances. You need only call the county Recycling Hotline @ 240-777-6410. It is hoped that the county will eventually reconsider its view on this issue so we can continue to make a difference. However, in the meantime I will be distributing new paint cans donated by Duron in Bethesda and by Glen Echo Hardware to Glen Echo residents. These cans will be labeled and will list which items can be collected in the cans for recycling. For the time being, people can drop the contents of these cans into the tall blue bin Text Box: on the Bryn Mawr Ave. side of my yard at 6005 Bryn Mawr Ave. Tom will retrieve it when full and deliver it to the Montgomery County Recycling Center on Shady Grove Rd., where other recycled items are taken. Text Box: TWO EMAIL LISTS FOR KEEPING IN TOUCH If you want to know what’s going on in town between Echo issues, you can sign up to be on two email lists for town residents. One, the official town one, will give you up-to-the-minute changes in dates of events, announcements, reminders of movies, Ladies’ Nights, and other information, This one is issued from the town hall and may be signed up for by sending an email to the town office at townhall@glenecho.org. The other is operated as a yahoo group, glenecho@yahoo.com and may be signed up for by contacting Dan Macy at dmacy@mbspro.com. On this list you can post information you think would be of interest to your neighbors, such as a lost cat, or a housekeeper with a free day, or an item to give away or sell. It’s a good idea to sign up for both of them.