CalMAX Connection: Fall 2004

When Dan Hoffman contacted the Burbank Recycle Center asking how to get rid of a dozen workstations without having to pay for their disposal, the CalMAX materials exchange seemed to be the only answer.

Recycle center staff could not help Hoffman, who works with the San Gabriel Chapter of the American Red Cross, because the center takes e-waste from Burbank residents only. Recycling electronic waste is costly, and storage space is at a premium.

Recycling Mr. Hoffman’s e-waste would have cost Burbank a few hundred dollars, so Recycle Center staff recommended that he take advantage of the free CalMAX program.

In less than 24 hours, Burbank’s recycling specialist, Hope McAloon, received an e-mail from Mr. Hoffman thanking her for the contact information. Through CalMAX, he had found a grade school nearby that wanted to take the workstations. The school staff would be happy to pick them up within the week.

A schoolchildren’s classroom now has workstations, and the cost to the Red Cross was just a few phone calls.

The work stations included computers, printers, and monitors, which the Burbank Recycle Center has been accepting daily since July 2001. The center collects an average of about one to two tons of electronic waste each month. The center has a computer reuse program for customers who bring working electronics. The Burbank Center is a buyback/drop-off center and materials recovery facility that also recycles about 5,000 tons a month of paper, cans, and bottles.

Video film
The City of Burbank operates its own mini-materials exchange program whenever possible. Since Burbank is located in the heart of filmmaking country, city staff had been looking for companies that would recycle video and audio tapes, cassettes, and CDs; and plastic cases, metal canisters, etc. The Recycle Center takes in thousands of videos for recycling annually, including overruns of tapes of popular shows.

Local senior citizen centers have benefited from this film recycling effort. Burbank Recycle Center staff gets permission from donors and offer some of these shows free to senior centers as entertainment.

Batteries
The Burbank Recycle Center also recycles household batteries. Local photographers leave perfectly good batteries at the center after one or two uses, rather than take the chance that one battery might not work and ruin an expensive “shoot.” Students earning service learning credits at the center test these batteries and separate the working ones, which remain at the Recycle Center public counter for anyone to take.

Burbank Connections Briefs
When a truckload of 55-gallon plastic drums came into the center, staff used them for trash bins in the buyback/drop-off area.

When the local hospitals had dish warmers to dispose of, the Burbank Animal Shelter was able to take some of them to reuse as doggie dishes.

Two local schools with gardens were matched with an avid gardener who had hundreds of plastic pots to give away.

An art school accepted a box full of small plastic film canisters for mixing paints.

Burbank Water and Power’s customer service department saves its white plastic adding machine tape cores for art projects.

Burbank joined the Nike Reuse-A-Shoe program in September 2002. The program began with 25 U.S. cities each volunteering to collect 5,000 pairs of athletic shoes from the public. The Recycle Center shipped 4,770 pairs of used shoes to Nike’s Wilsonville, Oregon, site for recycling. The center collected dozens of more shoes, but some were hardly used. Those were pulled from the collection carts and offered free for the taking.

The shoe collection carts were a gift from the City of Burbank’s recycling contractor, Burbank Recycling Inc. BRI took them from a waste hauler that was going to dispose of them because the carts were no longer of use to the hauler.

Recycling is great, but reuse is better. CalMAX has become one of Burbank’s handiest reuse resources to pass along to the public and business community. People are interested in reuse and recycling and are happy to embrace the idea of these exchange programs.

Contact:
Burbank Recycle Center
500 South Flower Street
Burbank, CA 91502
(818) 238-3900 (Tel) Monday-Friday 8am-5pm
(818) 841-9700 (Tel) Saturday 8am-4pm
www.ci.burbank.ca.us/publicworks/recycle-center

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Last updated: August 01, 2008