California Community Re-defines Recycling and Wins

California officially leads the nation in recycling, according to a report published by the California Integrated Waste Management Board announcing the state has reached a 58% waste diversion rate. Of the 93 million tons of solid waste produced by Californians, nearly 54 million tons have found renewed use in places other than landfills.

So how do we do it? For starters, our recycling initiative is in fact an industry and one that accounts for 85,000 jobs in our state economy and produces $10 billion in goods and services annually at that. But our recycling goes far beyond separating glass from plastic, which though important, composes merely a fraction of a household’s typical load of rubbish.

Here in San Francisco’s East Bay I can feel a tangible difference in the way people treat discarded objects, due in no small part to the myriad projects at work here. The report proclaims proudly:

Today, Californians have come to view our daily discards as potentially valuable commodities that can be reused or converted into high-value products. Nearly 500 cities, counties, and regional waste management compacts across the State contribute to the nation’s most advanced infrastructure of waste-handling options for residents and businesses alike. Curbside waste pickup services, recycling bins, waste sorting facilities, green waste composting, used oil collection centers, regulated landfills, household hazardous waste collection programs, recycled content purchasing policies, public education campaigns, electronic waste recycling, waste tire reuse programs, “green” buildings, public recognition awards, and myriad other programs abound, helping to divert tons of salvageable materials to innovative markets that did not exist just a few years ago.

It’s this culture of re-use that has helped the idea of comprehensive recycling catch on. Some of the local success stories in the very eco-minded Berkeley, CA community include:

• The East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse: A full service recycling stop for crafters and civilians alike, the Depot accepts donations from businesses and individuals which include the likes of excess letterhead, fabric scraps, old photographs, toilet paper rolls, jars and rubber stamps. The materials are well organized and affordably priced, making them an excellent alternative to conventional office supply and craft stores. The store’s unique sources make it a great resource for teachers, students and artists, and help unusual trash find just the right person who can put it to good use.
• Urban Ore & Ohmega Salvage: These two well-organized, retail junkyards are perhaps the most well-known, but hardly the only salvage yards in the Bay Area. Builders and homeowners will find fixtures, countertops, doors and cabinetry to use in a thrifty remodel, while decorators and collectors flock to the furniture and decorative pieces waiting to complete an interior decor. Urban Ore is a non-profit organization, half hardware store and half thrift store, that mostly receives its wares from estates and donated property. Ohmega Salvage on the other hand, is better for antique, high end architectural elements. Both provide a great alternative or supplement to Home Depot and between them attract all kinds of shoppers, from punks to snooty decorators and hippies to young professionals.
• SF Bay Area Craigslist: In the birthplace of this widely successful community board, almost everyone in the Bay Area has used it for something. Their For Sale section makes finding used items easier than Ebay and their free board has given the expression “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure!” new meaning. Raggedy items, vintage items and barely used items alike are regularly posted as Curb Alerts, effectively removing the stigma of trash-picking in this community. Often a Craigslist score can have not one, not two, but many lives by virtue of passing on objects once they prove ill-suited to one person’s use. Most trash must pass a Craigslist test before it can truly be hauled away.
• Stopwaste.org: This project of the Alameda County Waste Management Authority and the Alameda County Source Reduction and Recycling Board makes finding a responsible destination for true waste easy to do. They have a database of organizations that accept recycling organized by material and places where you can buy recycled materials too! Also remarkable is their recent offering of curbside composting, where you can mix food scraps and organic material in with your yard waste bin and they offer discounted compost bins on their website, if you’d rather do it yourself. In our county a residence pays for their trash collection by volume, which gives a financial incentive to those who compost and recycle.

For me, these initiatives represent the most obvious and most successful aspects of the recycling climate in the East Bay. And they are by far more comprehensive than any system I encountered on the East Coast. I’ll venture to guess that other states will continue to lag in their waste reduction until they too can more deeply incorporate the value of re-use into their consumer culture and their social fabric.

Image Credit: le at Flickr under a Creative Commons License