Water donations flooding into Flint means a lot of empty plastic bottles.
That's why a local environmental company is offering to recycle residents' water bottles, starting today.
Young's Environmental Cleanup, Inc. is an emergency response and environmental remediation provider with offices in Flint and Grand Rapids.
The company will act as a collection point and has partnered with Averill Recycling and Great Lakes Recycling of Flint to recycle the bottles.
Alex Young is the director of business development. He says it takes centuries for one water bottle to degrade in a landfill.
"You multiply that by however many we're going to have at the end of this crisis – I'd say in the millions – and I mean, you're looking at a lot of time," Young said.
He says Young's Environmental started the program because it wasn't aware of anything else in place in the city.
"Eventually we're going to run into a point where we've got so many empties that it's going to overwhelm everyone and we're trying to avoid that," Young said.
Residents can drop off bottles on weekdays between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. in front of the company's headquarters at 5305 N. Dort Highway, between Carpenter and Coldwater roads.
There are also smaller boxes located at the Food Bank of Eastern Michigan and the International Academy of Flint.
Young says they are working on creating more drop-off locations to "make it more accessible for others."
- Paulette Parker, Michigan Radio Newsroom
