ILACSD Kicks Off America Recycles Day Campaign!

Today’s blog comes from our Hotline Program Assistant, Barbara and Hotline Manager, Amanda! Our hotline team is gearing up for America Recycles Day and they want to make sure you’re up-to-date on the latest and greatest tips for waste reduction, while having a little fun! Read more below about what you can look forward to leading up to America Recycles day.

America Recycles Day is the nation's one and only day dedicated solely to recycling, so get ready for 1 month of recycling tips and tricks from ILACSD to get you geared up for the BIG DAY!
America Recycles Day is the nation’s one and only day dedicated solely to recycling, so get ready for 1 month of recycling tips and tricks from ILACSD to get you geared up for the BIG DAY!

Mark your calendar for America Recycles Day on November 15th! This year marks the 7th Annual America Recycles Day- the only nationally-recognized day to celebrate our waste reduction milestones and to share ideas with one another. The goal of America Recycles Day, an initiative of Keep America Beautiful, is to inspire communities to recycle more and correctly all year long. On that note, starting today, I Love A Clean San Diego kicks off its own America Recycles Day campaign! From now until November 15th, ILACSD will share with you tips and tricks to help minimize your impact on local landfills!

sorted recycling
Thankfully, in SD most recyclable items can commingle in one bin! Paper, rigid plastics, glass, aluminum, and cartons.

Be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest to receive our helpful tips. You can look forward to posts about –

  • #DIY upcycling tips – give old items a second life!
  • #TransformationTuesday
  • Recycling humor – yes, it does exist!
  • Tips for hard to recycle items

I Love A Clean San Diego started as an organization to combat San Diego’s litter problem, and has quickly evolved to address residents’ recycling needs, as well. ILACSD first started its recycling hotline in 1972, focusing on keeping thousands of Christmas trees out of landfills. Today, we continue to run our one-stop recycling resource, WasteFreeSD.org, and our newest addition, RepairSD.org!

Christmas Tree Recycling, 1972
Challenges in finding out where to recycle Christmas trees spurred ILACSD to start a recycling hotline in 1972…more than 40 years later, it’s still going strong. Give us a call today, 1-800-237-BLUE!

As San Diego moves towards a 75% diversion rate by 2020 and a zero waste goal by 2040, we are dedicated to be your go-to resource to help reach these goals. Although this may appear to be a lofty goal, ILACSD is here to help inform fellow San Diegans and ultimately, keep valuable resources out of local landfills.

More than 51,000 Americans have already taken the America Recycles Day pledge on Keep America Beautiful’s webpage. By taking it, you pledge to learn more about the materials that can be recycled, reduce your waste by recycling, and encourage others to do the same. Click here to take the pledge today!

For more information on all of your recycling, reuse, and repair needs, visit WasteFreeSD.org and RepairSD.org!

 

What’s Better Than Recycling? Reuse and Repair!

Today’s blog post comes from ILACSD’s Program Assistant – Educator, Bethany Edgar, who breaks down the Reuse & Repair area of San Diego’s Earth Fair 2014.  Bethany_cropped

 

Thanks to the efforts of the SD Reuse and Repair Network and their partners, this year’s Earth Fair in Balboa Park featured an area dedicated exclusively to the important topic of “Reduce, Reuse, Repair, and Repurpose.”  This area was the perfect opportunity for I Love A Clean San Diego to promote our new repair database, www.RepairSD.org.   People were excited to hear about this helpful new resource, commenting how difficult it can be to find information online about repairing things.  After trying out the database on a tablet at our booth, quite a few people said they were impressed with how user-friendly the database is and that they would definitely use it and help spread the word about this useful tool!

 For those of you who may have missed out on this unique and inspiring section of the fair, here are some highlights:

 SD Reuse and Repair Network

This network of local businesses, municipalities, non-profits, and interested citizens created a stage area offering workshops for fairgoers on a variety of topics including bike repair, San Diego’s zero waste plans, and furniture transformation.  In their booth they showcased a number of creatively repurposed furniture items that were rescued from a truck of leftovers from a Goodwill auction on its way to the landfill, including:

This old headboard was turned into a coffee table
This old headboard was turned into a coffee table
A dresser drawer turned into a herb garden box and a broken chair turned into a plant stand!
A dresser drawer turned into a herb garden box and a broken chair turned into a plant stand!

 

Bikes del Pueblo

“Learn, fix, build, ride”

Bikes del Pueblo is a dedicated collective that seeks to empower local communities through bicycle education by offering open workshops to assist people in building, maintaining, and repairing their bikes.  During the Earth Fair they taught several bicycle repair workshops and provided free bicycle repair manuals to fairgoers. You can find them every Saturday from 9 am to 1 pm at the City Heights Farmer’s Market where they set up a mini-shop to walk people through the process of fixing their own bikes.

 

Boxed Green

“Cheap, gently used boxes near you”

Boxed Green works to reuse cardboard boxes by connecting San Diegans who need boxes with local retailers who have boxes to spare.  On Boxed Green’s user-friendly website, San Diegans can choose a nearby retailer, purchase boxes online for just $1 per box, then pick up the gently used boxes at their convenience directly from the retailer. This unique service saves trees and saves customers time and money when looking for moving boxes.  Plus, a portion of all sales is donated to eco-focused non-profits!

 

Knife Savers

“Lost your edge? We can get it back for you!”

Jim Green, owner and proprietor of Knife Savers, scours thrift stores and swap meets for high quality old knives that need repair and then sells the refurbished knives at reasonable prices, thereby keeping precious resources out of our landfills and providing a valuable service to the community. Contact Jim at jimg@knifesavers.com or (619) 846-6526

 

reInterpret

“materials for art & learning”

Judith Toepel has created this innovative non-profit as a community building resource for clean, usable materials that may have been considered waste.  reInterpret collaborates with schools, teachers, artists, and businesses on the topic of sustainability, industry, arts and education.  They offer teacher workshops to inspire the use of recycled materials to aid in learning math, science, language, and creative arts as a means of meeting the Common Core Standards.

 

Of course, if you are ever looking for repurpose ideas, you can always check out our Pinterest page, or if you need a place to repair items, look no further than www.RepairSD.org.