Valleywide : Recycling Will Fund Program for Elderly

A couple of months ago, Organization for the Needs of the Elderly was in a bind.

The group provides a variety of services for elderly San Fernando Valley residents, and suddenly they were facing a $25,000 reduction in city funding for a program to feed homebound seniors.

“That got everybody thinking about what we could do to raise money for this program,” said Lola Rabow, director of ONE’s Senior Service and Resource Center in Reseda.

Enter volunteer Alex Andres, a Sierra Club veteran who proposed a novel method of replacing the missing money.

“I suggested we set up a recycling program,” he said. At Andres’ urging, the group installed several bins to collect used newspaper and will funnel the proceeds from the recycled paper into the programs offered by ONE.

The organization has placed two recycling bins at the Reseda senior center at 18255 Victory Blvd. and another at its Van Nuys site, 17400 Victory Blvd. Anders said that public response during the past several weeks has been great.

The group has also come up with a way to foil the scavengers who have looted the city’s curbside recycling program.

“We have a bin with a hood on top and it’s hard as hell to steal out of it,” he said.

Just a few years ago, recycled newsprint was virtually worthless, Andres explained, but in recent years the price has increased dramatically.

“There’s money in paper,” he said.