Thousand Oaks’ Policy of Recycling Paves the Way for National Award : Environment: City is honored by Conference of Mayors for progressive use of resources, which includes making streets out of ground-up tires.

City Manager Grant Brimhall was shocked to learn that Thousand Oaks won a national award for recycling earlier this week.

Even though Brimhall hands out business cards printed on recycled paper, walks by recycling bins prominently placed around City Hall and drives to and from work on roads paved with ground-up, used tires, he was surprised that the U.S Conference of Mayors bestowed an award on Thousand Oaks.

When Graham Watts, the city’s environmental programs analyst, suggested that Thousand Oaks apply for the award, Brimhall admits he thought it didn’t have a snowball’s chance of joining the ranks of places like Seattle, which has won national acclaim as the granddaddy of recycling innovators.

But when winners of the annual U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Buy Recycled Campaign award were announced this week, Thousand Oaks came in first among medium-sized cities, those with 100,000 to 150,000 people.

Philadelphia won in the large-city category for its continuing dedication to buying recycled products through rocky financial times. Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, took the award for small cities.

Seattle was honored separately for creative use of recycled materials, for instance carpeting its community centers with recycled plastic.

“To be in the same category with cities of that caliber is a huge deal,” Watts said. “Seattle is the leader in the country, and it’s long been recognized as one of the best and top recycling communities. It’s just great to be in the same paragraph with them.”

Watts said Thousand Oaks committed itself to developing more efficient and successful recycling programs only five years ago. But progress has been swift.

In 1994, 42% of the city’s budget for office supplies was spent on recycled products, an $85,000 commitment. Thousand Oaks is one of three cities nationwide that are setting up environmental business clusters, where small businesses share and conserve energy and resources.

The concessionaire at the Civic Arts Plaza Performing Arts Center is required by contract to use only recycled products for serving snacks and drinks. Plastic “lumber” trash cans dot the city.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors also praised Thousand Oaks for its rubberized pavement program. More than 60 miles of city streets are already paved with a unique blend of used tires, tennis balls and asphalt, and the city will continue to spend about $1.5 million annually to upgrade more road surfaces with the recycled material.

Thousand Oaks has used more than 400,000 tires, broken down to the consistency of coffee grounds, in the paving program since 1991. Creating the mixture sounds like a hellish recipe: The mashed tires are mixed with asphalt, baked at 400 degrees, blended with sand and gravel and poured.

Tom Pizza, an engineer with the city, said the rubberized pavement is a little more costly, but the results are outstanding. The surface resists wear better, stays black longer and provides a quieter ride. With the exception of the California Department of Transportation, Thousand Oaks is the largest user of rubberized pavement in California, he said.

For now the glass-and-marble Mayors Conference award is sitting in Public Works Director Don Nelson’s office until the city decides where to display it. But the award will ultimately bring far more side benefits, Watts said.

“It snowballs. You seize national attention for something you have been doing for years, another agency hears about it, they contact you, you share all the information you have with everyone. Eventually, more and more people realize that they should be doing this too.”