Bins at 30 Locations : Glass Companies Launch Recycling Effort in County
Seventy-five fiber glass dome-shaped bins have been placed at 30 locations around San Diego County to kick off a $2-million glass recycling program here and in Los Angeles County.
The program is sponsored by the workers and management of eight glass companies making up the California Glass Recycling Corp.
Glass recycling is not as popular as the recycling of aluminum and newspaper, corporation spokesman Warren Merrill said. But corporation officials hope the repositories will make it easier for people to “get into the habit of dropping their glass into the bins,” he said.
“All they really have to do is separate the containers--colored glass goes in the green bin and clear glass goes in the white one,” Merrill said. Lids and caps should be removed.
As bins fill up, participating businesses will call IMS Recycling Services, which has a contract to pick up the glass, said Ethel Kallsen, vice president of recycling for IMS.
“We regularly do about 100 tons a month,” Kallsen said, “but now we expect a lot more.”
People dropping off the glass containers will not be paid, Merrill said. Instead, the proceeds--half a cent for every glass bottle or jar, or $10 for every bin-full--will go to the San Diego Boy Scouts Council. For the Scouts’ efforts to promote the project, the council received a $1,000 check from California Glass Recycling Corp.
The recyling program began in Sacramento eight months ago and has netted $3,500 each for the Sacramento Boy Scout and Girl Scout councils there, according to Frank Maldonado, director of in-school scouting.
Merrill said manufacturers will benefit from the recycling program because less fuel is needed to recycle glass than to produce it. Consumers should thus benefit from lower prices, and the program should also mean less broken glass on the streets, he said.
Merrill said each bin will hold a ton of glass. The drop-in holes are 4 feet, 9 inches off the ground, making it possible for children to dump bottles but not to reach in and be cut by broken glass, he said.
Bins are at Ralphs stores; Arena Recycling; Bethany Lutheran Church; Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church; Boy Scouts of America, 1207 Upas St.; College Lutheran Church; Great Western Fibre; Imperial Beach Youth Hostel; San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium; Miramar Landfill; St. Jude’s Shrine; Hoyt Park in Scripps Ranch; Universal Recycling; UCSD Recycling Co-Op; Valley Farms, 941 Otay Lakes Road, Chula Vista; Vons supermarkets; Montgomery-Waller Park, and the Pacific Beach Town Council office, 870 Garnet St.
