Editorials

In 1970, recycling was one of those odd things that granola heads did, schlepping their newspapers and maybe their bottles and tin cans to a site behind a co-op market and tossing it all into marked bins. 

You can still do that, if you’re so inclined, at Dwight and Martin Luther King Jr. Way—at least until the site is sold and some new apartment block or other “dense-use” building goes up; or at Second and Gilman. But recycling has gone mainstream in the last 30 years, and in Berkeley as in many places you can just put the recyclables out once a week, next to the garbage, in those handy blue bins.  

The Ecology Center was in on the start of that trend, with one of the first curbside pick-up recycling programs in the country. Oddly, it’s become a survivor of sorts: one of the last nonprofits that still do the work.  

In 1973, working with a modest federal grant, leased trucks, and wooden boxes, a few good women and men started picking up bundled newspapers at curbside and delivering them to an egg carton maker. Old-timers might remember the converted Lucky Beer truck and its motley crew. 

In 1980, they added cans and bottles to the list for collection in biodegradable—sometimes a bit too biodegradable—waxed cardboard crates. The blue bins with the odd motto about “Heart of the Green Valley” (not a product of the Ecology Center’s prose mill) came later, and are still one of regrettably few actual uses for “recycled” plastic. 

The program had to weather at least two little wars to get this far. 

First was the campaign against the waste-to-energy incinerator that was proposed for West Berkeley in the 70s and finally defeated at the polls in 1982. This sounded like a good idea until people noticed that it would encourage more waste—more to be burned, including recyclables like paper, for more revenue-producing energy—and would dump dioxin and other pollutants on its neighbors, while producing toxic ash that would still need disposal.  

The other internecine battle was over the City of Berkeley’s recycling contract: Engineered Waste Control of Emeryville versus a coalition of the Ecology Center, Urban Ore, and Community Conservation Center, which was doing separation and bundling of waste for processing by then. 

When the smoke cleared and what was actually being offered was taken into account, the coalition was still doing the work. Berkeley voters confirmed the arrangement in 1984.  

Some wars aren’t over yet. In 2000, the recyclers grudgingly started picking up plastics; they’re still reminding people that plastics can’t be recycled indefinitely like metal and glass; plastics degrade as polymer chains break when the stuff is melted. 

Also, what markets exist for used plastic are largely in places like China, and no one here has been able to find out what they’re doing with the stuff there, under what working conditions.  

Recycling’s not all about grouchy foot-dragging. The Ecology Center’s recycling arm started experimenting with 100 percent biodiesel in 2001, and now the whole fleet runs on it, which is why you smell French fries when the truck goes by in the morning. 

They’re setting up a 200-gallon-a-day processor to make fuel out of stuff like eucalyptus oil—at last, a use for invasive exotics!—and to experiment with locally produced agricultural oils as well as restaurant grease. 

The center will celebrates its 30th anniversary Thursday night with a reception and dinner program starting at 6 p.m. at International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. 

With environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill serving as emcee, the Ecology Center fete features an organic vegetarian dinner and remarks from Martin Bourke, the center’s executive director, and Beverly Thorpe, co-founder of Clean Production Action—a nonprofit that promotes the creation of non-hazardous products. 

Tickets are $60, and proceeds will support biodiesel fuel promotion and the campaign to battle construction of six new trash incinerators in the state—including installations planned for Alameda and Santa Cruz. 

For more information call 548-2220 ext. 237 or see www.ecologycenter.org/30years/.