RECYCLING: Salvaging a Solution : Volunteers Prove Point With Recycling Service

It started with a couple of environmentally oriented UC San Diego graduates searching for meaning in post-college life. The year was 1983 and the idea they lit upon was this: Why not ask people to pile their cans, bottles and newspapers on the curb and then drive around in a truck and pick them up?

The band of Solana Beach-based graduates formed a nonprofit organization and put together a board of directors. They pooled pocket change to print up literature announcing the program’s debut. Someone donated a truck.

Then one day four years ago, Solana Recyclers hit the street, launching curbside pickup of aluminum, glass and newsprint for 500 homes in Solana Beach.

In the beginning, only one in 10 residents took part. But within a few months, participation doubled and later climbed to 30%, a level considered impressive for a voluntary program with pickup that does not coincide with trash day.

And recently, Solana Recyclers opened some new frontiers, initiating service for 2,500 homes in Del Mar and 5,000 more in Encinitas under contract with those cities.

Suddenly, an outfit once run on a shoestring by a volunteer army out of the home of its founder has a suite of offices and an annual budget of $135,000--enough to pay its chief a salary for the first time ever.

“This is definitely an exciting time for us,” said executive director Brooke Nash, 26, a member of the original cadre of UCSD alumni. “We’ve gotten by as a grass-roots community organization dependent on the help of a lot of people to survive . . . Suddenly, the interest in recycling is tremendous. People are knocking on our door.”

Indeed they are. San Marcos has asked the organization to come in and make a pitch to run curbside service and Carlsbad is also looking for someone to develop a recycling program. Vista, Chula Vista and Imperial Beach have called Solana Recyclers with queries as well.

In part Solana Recylers’ popularity can be attributed to the fact that it’s practically the only game in town. With the help of a $250,000 grant from the state Solid Waste Management Board, Oceanside launched a curbside pickup program four years ago, but participation has been disappointing, hovering around 13%. The city and county of San Diego are mapping plans to begin curbside pickup, but the birth of those programs is months away.

“They are really doing a tremendous job down there in Solana Beach,” said William Shireman, executive director of Californians Against Waste, which pushed for the new state law providing refunds for aluminum, glass and plastic beverage containers. “For years they’ve been operating strictly on volunteer labor and donations, and anyone in the industry will tell you that is just superhuman.”

Nash attributes much of the Solana Recyclers’ success to the demographics in North County’s coastal area. “The basic fabric of the community is one of people who care and take pride in their town, people who want to contribute to the quality of life in their neighborhood,” she said.

Currently, the organization fields a fleet of three trucks for its rounds in the neighboring seaside cities. As the truck threads through the streets, workers wearing thick gloves and safety glasses leap off its bed to nab the bags and boxes of recyclables that dot the route. Glass is separated into two bins--clear and colored--and cans are stuffed in large potato sacks. Newspapers are stacked six feet high in the back of the vehicle.

It’s not easy work, the pay’s modest and the stench of the used containers can be unpleasant. But the trio working a Solana Beach route one recent morning didn’t seem to mind.

“We keep ourselves occupied making observations about people based on their recyclables,” said Van Clothier, 27, a bearded environmentalist and longtime backer of Solana Recyclers. “West of I-5 you’ve got the beer drinkers. East of I-5 are the hard liquor types. And in the tract homes, you get the carbonated juices and mineral waters, the designer drinks.”

Occasionally, the crew will take a break from their labor to lobby a homeowner whose curb was bare of recyclables. And some residents get special treatment. At one Solana Beach house, the recyclers retrieve materials from the garage of an elderly man who can’t haul the stuff out to the street.

In Solana Beach, residents receive the service at no cost. In Del Mar and Encinitas, a 55-cent surcharge has been added to homeowners’ trash bills to cover costs not paid by the sale of materials.

Solana Recyclers sells the glass and aluminum collected on the rounds to the Del Mar Recycling Center, a facility run by Coast Waste Management, which in turn sells them to companies that reprocess the materials. Newspapers are sold directly to a company for recycling.

Although they started it on a whim and had a lot of lean years, Solana Recyclers’ pioneers now say they’re in the recycling world to stay.

“Garbage is my life,” said Nash, who estimates that San Diego County as a whole is 10 years behind Northern California on the recycling front. “Recycling is here to stay, out of necessity. Who knows, we may even be mining our landfills in the future for materials. I plan to be around to see how things turn out.”