"Innovations" Case Studies: Community Cleanups

Campaigns and Assistance

• Reuse and Recycling Campaigns
• Cleanup Campaigns
• Information and Assistance

Reuse and Recycling Campaigns

Second Chance Week

The Local Government Commission, a nonprofit organization based in Sacramento, Calif., has organized Second Chance Week in the fall (usually October) for the past three years, initially under contract to the CIWMB. Second Chance Week has stimulated a wealth of information and ideas about how to promote reuse of materials, including bulky goods, in communities throughout California.

Many activities that have been organized are highlighted on the Second Chance web site, www.choose2reuse.org/ and are profiled in a case study below. Some of those activities have targeted many of the same bulky goods as community cleanups. Second Chance Week would be a particularly good time to organize a fall cleanup activity to promote reuse and recycling of bulky goods.

Communities could also use many of these ideas throughout the year. They could incorporate one or more of these ideas into their regular municipal services and/or franchise agreements.

In addition to Second Chance Week, other major events designed specifically to promote reuse, recycling, and composting are Earth Day and America Recycles Day.

Earth Day

Earth Day is held each year on April 22. The goal of Earth Day is to promote a healthy environment and a peaceful, just, sustainable world by organizing events, activities, and campaigns. Since its inception in 1970, reuse and recycling events associated with Earth day have provided opportunities for the public to demonstrate their support for the environment. Communities can promote reuse and recycling of bulky wastes annually through one of the activities described in this case study. This is a particularly good time to organize spring cleanups focused on reuse and recycling.

America Recycles Day

America Recycles Day is held each year on November 15. America Recycles Day is designed to encourage people to buy more recycled-content products at home and in the workplace to keep recycling working. Their slogan is “For our children’s future, we must buy recycled today.”

To encourage Americans to pledge to buy more recycled products, organizers are offering incentive prizes like remanufactured computers, a family trip to Disney World, and even a new home, the “American Green Dream House,” built primarily from recycled materials. More than 2.9 million Americans participated in 1999 America Recycles Day (ARD) events held in 49 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Although the focus of America Recycles Day is on buying recycled products, many communities also use this event as a time to promote reuse, recycling and composting in general. This would make another good opportunity for a fall cleanup event that promotes reuse and recycling.

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Cleanup Campaigns

In addition to community organized cleanup campaigns, many volunteer groups conduct cleanups of neighborhoods, vacant lots, rivers, lakes, and beaches. These cleanups produce many of the similar bulky goods that are the targets of community cleanups.

These volunteer groups appreciate the support of their community in organizing these events, and they appreciate seeing the materials they collect reused or recycled. Some communities include requirements in their franchise agreements that waste haulers must provide, collect, and dispose of a certain number of trash and recycling containers for such events. In other communities, this is done more informally, with the city or volunteer group requesting such assistance from their hauler.

If communities structure their own bulky goods collection programs to focus on reuse and recycling, they should also have the resources and systems to reuse and recycle materials from such volunteer initiatives.

Keep California Beautiful

Keep America Beautiful, Inc. is a nonprofit organization whose network of local, statewide, and international affiliate programs educates individuals about litter prevention and ways to reduce, reuse, recycle, and properly manage waste materials. Through partnerships and strategic alliances with citizens, businesses, and government, Keep America Beautiful’s programs motivate millions of volunteers annually to clean up, beautify, and improve their neighborhoods. This creates healthier, safer, and more livable community environments. Keep California Beautiful is an affiliate of Keep America Beautiful, based in San Diego.

This spring, from mid-March through mid-May, more than 2 million volunteers of all ages will be taking on the challenge to “pick up, spruce up, and paint up,” as the second annual Great American Cleanup gets underway. Under the leadership of Keep America Beautiful, thousands of creative cleanup, beautification, and community improvement events will take place in more than 10,000 communities in 35 states. More events are scheduled in Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and Winnipeg, Canada.

In California, there are four KAB affiliates, in addition to Keep California Beautiful:

• I Love a Clean San Diego.
• San Jose Beautiful.
• Keep Riverside Clean & Beautiful.
• Seaside Neighborhood Improvement Commission.

Keep America Beautiful maintains an excellent Web site with extensive information about organizing cleanups and the psychology of cleanups, as well as other implementation materials and sample news releases. The organization also publishes a variety of materials on these topics. Communities seeking to improve their cleanup programs could obtain a significant amount of information from Keep America Beautiful and their California affiliates.

Information and Assistance

Grants Programs

One of the ways communities can help partner with other organizations on community cleanups is to set up small grant programs.

San Jose Beautiful provides matching grant support to nonprofit organizations, neighborhood associations, schools, and other community organizations that wish to help foster community pride in San Jose through beautification or landscaping. Grants generally range from $100-$2,000. However, on a project-by-project basis, some grants may be funded at a higher level. Funding is to be matched by volunteer efforts and/or matching cash donations.

San Jose Beautiful is an office of the City of San Jose Department of Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services. San Jose Beautiful receives funding from both the city and businesses in the area to fund these grants and other programs.

The Alameda County Waste Management Authority has set up a grants program for:

• Recycling collection and processing.
• New technologies.
• Market development for recycled-content products.
• Increased public awareness.

Grant sizes range from mini-grants (under $5,000) to very large grants of $300,000 and more. The overall philosophy is to fund innovative efforts, develop partnerships, and invest in infrastructure to support recycling in the long term. Some efforts are targeted to specific audiences, while others are designed to meet specific short-term needs of organizations that need assistance. The main grant program, the recycling board grants to nonprofits, includes a special focus on low-income communities.

Other communities have established grant programs to accomplish similar purposes, including the City and County of San Francisco, the County of San Diego (in the early 1990s) and the County of Santa Cruz.

CalMax. The California Materials Exchange, or CalMax, offers a tremendous resource for the reuse and recycling of bulky goods collected from community cleanups. CalMax is a free service provided by the CIWMB. It is designed to help businesses find markets for materials that have been traditionally discarded. CalMax recognizes that materials discarded by one business may be a resource for another.

CalMax publishes a quarterly catalog and maintains a web site, www.ciwmb.ca.gov/CalMAX. Both of these list available and wanted materials throughout the State of California. Listings are provided at no cost, and exchanges are generally handled directly between interested parties. Some of the items listed may have a minimal cost, or they are free but the receiving party must provide transportation.

Bulky goods are often listed in CalMax, particularly those generated from excess inventory of businesses. However, CalMax could also assist communities in marketing the bulky goods they collect, particularly if the communities have a storage area for those materials until a match is made.

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Minimaxes

Communities are providing local businesses with additional help to match their resources by organizing minimaxes. Minimaxes typically publish their own catalogs of materials available and wanted in a specific region. Local recycling coordinators that manage these mini-maxes can often assist businesses in learning how to use this system and identify other local resources to help meet their needs.

Local minimax programs have now been set up in the following areas:

• Los Angeles County Materials Exchange Program (LACoMAX).
• Napa County Materials Exchange Program (NapaMAX).
• Santa Cruz County Materials Exchange Program (ProMAX).
• Shasta County Materials Exchange Program (ShastaMAX).
• Sonoma County Materials Exchange (SonoMax).
• Ventura County Materials Exchange Program (VCMAX).

Donate...Don’t Dump!

Under Internal Revenue Code Section 170(e)(3), tax deductions are available to donors of excess inventory. This law allows “for profit” enterprises to donate their excess inventory to charitable organizations and receive a deduction of up to twice the cost. Shipping and handling expenses are also deductible.

United Way set up Gifts in Kind America to help businesses find out where and how to donate excess inventory. This nonprofit directs the donations of materials and services to needy charities. Every year, the group disperses products to approximately 50,000 nonprofits nationwide.

Some of the organization’s clients include Fortune 500 corporate giants such as Hewlett-Packard and the Gillette Company. Others are small independent family businesses. Gifts in Kind also brokers and handles all “product giving” for computer firms such as Microsoft. It also networks with nearly 400 retailers to donate clothing via the American Apparel Manufacturing Association.

Guides to Reuse

Many communities are now preparing and distributing guides to reuse, resale, and repair businesses and to donation opportunities in their region. Some communities incorporate these into recycling directories or buy-recycled guides. Guides often include addresses, telephone numbers, and specializations.

Some guides consist of just a map and listing of the businesses. Others are produced as a booklet with some information and tips about how to reuse and recycle different materials and products. Often guides are distributed just before Second Chance Week to coordinate it with other events and highlight reuse opportunities during that period.

The City of Oakland worked with the local reuse community to develop a comprehensive directory to local reuse opportunities. This listing includes more than 200 local businesses and nonprofit organizations where residents can buy, sell, consign, trade, rent, repair, and donate reusable goods. More than 50,000 directories were distributed during Second Chance Week in 1998 as an insert in The Oakland Tribune, and many others were handed out at reuse establishments, libraries, and public events.

Other good examples of directories include:

• “Put It To Good Reuse: A Directory of Donation Opportunities for Los Angeles.”
• “Berkeley /Albany Reuse Directory.”
• “Rummaging Through Northern California’s Resale Directory.”
• “Contra Costa County Second Chance Directory.”
• “Mojave Desert Reuse Guide.”

The Bay Area Recycling & Reuse Directory for Computers, Electronics, & Business Equipment is published by the Environmental Partnership. This guide lists businesses and nonprofit organizations that accept computers and parts, electronics, business equipment, and specialty items for recycling or reuse. This is one of many specialized reuse guides that have been developed regionally.

The City of San Francisco recycling program provides information and opportunities to reuse goods.

Rummaging Through Northern California (RTNC) is a free bimonthly newspaper distributed at 500 locations around the Bay Area. RTNC is about great places to shop for secondhand goods, including surplus and salvage items in the Bay Area and beyond, with everything from “clothing to computers” and “furniture to food.”

As a way to get the word out for startup businesses, RTNC lists all the new places that offer secondhand goods. RTNC also annually compiles a free directory of more than 1,000 places to resale shop, along with a listing of related annual events.

Four Sacramento Valley local governments partnered to produce a Second Chance 1999 Reuse Calendar. This full-sized color calendar features a different reuse business each month, such as consignment clothing stores, repair shops, and used sporting equipment outlets. The calendar also includes a directory of more than 100 additional local reuse businesses and organizations. More than 10,000 calendars were distributed to Sacramento residents during Second Chance Week.

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Last updated: December 28, 2007