America Recycles Day 2011!

Every year on November 15^th communities across the country come together to celebrate America Recycles Day, a day dedicated to educating and motivating our neighbors, friends and community leaders to recycle!  

This year, over 800 students at Los Coches Creek Middle School participated in an EnviroFair in celebration of America Recycles Day her in San Diego. I Love A Clean San Diego and The County of San Diego worked together to educate 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students about recycling and the importance of conserving the environment.

Activities included a lesson on recycling rules  and a fast and furious Recycle Relay by I Love A Clean San Diego educators, a composting discussion and demonstration by the Solana Center, watershed model presentations and water quality testing from the Splash Science Mobile Lab, and informational booths and recycled giveaways from Allied Waste, the County of San Diego, and I Love A Clean San Diego.

Greg Bledsoe of NBC San Diego caught some great action shots during the day, click here to view the video!

Los Coches Creek Middle School already has their own recycling program in place, with bins in classrooms and around campus. Shauna Stueve, a teacher at the school, gets help from students to ensure that the program runs effectively and that all recyclable items are placed in the correct bins. The EnviroFair showed students why their recycling efforts are so important. According to Robert Wade, a science teacher at Los Coches Creek Middle School, “Students were engaged and challenged by your staff and they all came away with global ideas they could implement in their daily lives.”

Immediately after school, many of the students and teachers joined I Love A Clean San Diego in a community cleanup in the area surrounding the school. Trash and recyclable materials were collected separately, and many students were surprised at how much litter they found in their community. Sonja Washer, a math and science teacher at Los Coches Creek middle school thanked I Love A Clean San Diego after the event, saying, “Thank you again for your concern for our environment and for educating our students so our futures are cleaner.”

One-Stop Recycling Resource

Have old paint cans, batteries, or electronics lying around the house? I Love A Clean San Diego provides San Diegans with an online recycling database, www.wastefreesd.org, plus a bilingual hotline (1-877-R-1-EARTH) that offer useful tips for safe disposal of paints and other household waste. This information about waste disposal and recycling helps to prevent illegal dumping, and prevents hazardous materials from entering our landfills, stopping serious environmental problems before they happen. In 2011, we provided referrals to keep 19,000 items out of local landfills!

Recycling from Past to Present

This week was a big one for the environmental community. Monday we celebrated America Recycles Day across the country with a proclamation from President Obama himself. While it was long and a bit dry, there were a few parts that really resonated with us, and reassured us of the importance of our work.

Each small act of conservation, when combined with other innumerable deeds across the country, can have an enormous impact on the health of our environment.  On America Recycles Day, we celebrate the individuals, communities, local governments, and businesses that work together to recycle waste and develop innovative ways to manage our resources more sustainably.

Recycling is important, and for some it’s easier than others. When I Love A Clean San Diego made the commitment to serve the community in 1954, recycling was term rarely used. Through phone book recycling drives, Christmas tree recycling programs, electronic waste collection events and our Disposal Solution Center, www.wastefreesd.org, I Love A Clean San Diego has always been first to tackle a recycling challenge.

We were especially happy to hear the report out on Monday from the City of San Diego which announced that the 2010 recycling diversion rate is their highest ever, at 66%. While we don’t want to strain a muscle patting ourselves on the back for this accomplishment, we know that I Love A Clean San Diego’s efforts over the past 56 years may have something to do with this recycling success. But, as a city and a county, there is still room for improvement. Why not shoot for 75% diversion from our landfills? But how?

Good news for those of you living in within the City of San Diego. The City of San Diego also announced on Monday that they will be accepting many more “rigid plastics” in the blue curbside bins. These items include clean plastic food packaging, plant pots, toys, even lawn furniture. The complete press release with all the new rigid plastic rules can be found on the City of San Diego’s website.

And to provide some inspiration for all of us who sometimes struggle with recycling, here’s another excerpt from Obama’s proclamation.

On America Recycles Day, let us respond to our collective responsibility as a people and a Nation to be better stewards of our global environment, and to pass down a planet to future generations that is better than we found it.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves!