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Philly, Baltimore Programs Debut: We have a couple interesting pieces of recycling news today.

The Baltimore Sun reports that Baltimore County began single-stream recycling yesterday.

And the Philadelphia Inquirer reports that North Philadelphia yesterday launched the RecycleBank recycling awards program, and that program will expand to the rest of the city over the next few months.

Cali Claims Moon Junk: The California Historical Resources Commission has laid claim to about 100 objects of trash left on the moon by the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, according to an article from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Discover Magazine notes that the collection of moon trash encompasses 106 objects weighing a collective 5,000 pounds and includes many mundane items (bags of human waste, anyone?) but also several objects of major historical significance, like the bottom stage of the lunar lander and the U.S. flag planted on the moon´s surface by astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

The S.F. Chronicle story points out that the California agency´s action is largely symbolic since obviously no one has any way to get to the moon right now, but with technology pushing toward landing more people on the moon within the next decade, the agency wants to protect the objects left behind by the Apollo 11 crew to dissuade future moon-landers from trying to snatch something to smuggle back and sell on the Internet.

Pete Fehrenbach is managing editor of Waste & Recycling News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.

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