CSULB Recycling Center, cont.

The ASI Recycling Center has helped lower Long Beach's environmental impact, as well as actively promoting recycling in more ways than other local recycling centers.

Lisa Harris, city of Long Beach's recycling specialist, recommends the CSULB recycling center to people who are looking to be more environmentally-conscious. The recycling center is the "cleanest and most organized" recycling facility in Long Beach, she says.

The CSULB recycling center averages 120 people bringing in their recyclables daily. Monthly, the center recycles over 500,000 cans and bottles. The center collects paper, cardboard, cans and bottles from the University Student Union, Isabel Patterson Child Development Center and dining halls on campus. The center also works with University Facilities Management to handle recycling at special events.

The center is open to the public, allowing people and businesses who do not have curb-side recycling cans the opportunity to reduce their environmental impact. The center accepts material that many other recycling centers in Long Beach do not accept, such as scrap metal. The ASI recycling center is a state-certified redemption center, providing a place for people to receive deposits back on their beverage containers.

In addition to providing recycling services, the center also coordinates events to raise awareness in the Long Beach community of the importance of recycling and caring for the environment. The center provides educational tours of the facility, and nearly 500 people in the last couple of years have attended, including school-age children, boy scouts and girl scouts.

In August, with the city of Long Beach as a cosponsor, the CSULB recycling center held its first ever Kid ECO Fair to raise children's awareness of recycling. The center and lot 14A were closed for the day to set up educational booths with 20 exhibitors displaying information about various environmental topics.

About 850 children from day camps attended the fair to learn about the different environmental issues. The children visited the interactive booths and had opportunities to win prizes, such as rulers and pencils made from recycled material.

The recycling center currently has 80 recycling cans on campus. However, the center's goal is to have a recycling container next to every one of the over 400 trash cans on campus. The recycling cans cost about $450 each, and the center is seeking grants to help fund the cost of providing more recycling cans on campus.

The center, started by students in 1970, is self-supporting and is currently run by a staff comprised of one full-time coordinator and eight part-time student assistants. The center is trying to raise money for site improvements, including replacing the old office trailer and installing running water and toilet facilities.

CSULB Recycling Center

Associated Students, Inc.'s Recycling Center has accomplished significantly reducing carbon dioxide emissions by providing recycling services for the CSULB, as well as the Long Beach, community.

In a recent ASI Press Release boasting the achievements of the Recycling Center, the ASI Recycling Center coordinator Lee Johnson compared the center's impact of green house gas reductions to the removal of 449 passenger vehicles from the road for a year. In the last year, the Recycling Center saved nearly 3,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by recycling over 1.7 million pounds of material.

Located on the north side of campus by the Walter Pyramid, the student-run center collects and processes cans, bottles, cardboard and other recyclables from the campus grounds.

In the past year, the center promoted awareness to the CSULB public of its services by selling shirts with the slogans "Recycle or Die" and "I am part of the solution" to students who recycled or donated at the center. The campaign successfully garnered a 20 percent increase in material collection since the previous year.

The Recycling Center also gets involved with serving the community by being proactive on campus. While new student residents moved in to the dorms over Labor Day weekend, the center helped recycle, collect and sort cardboard, Styrofoam and other accumulated recyclable waste from the student residents. Over the weekend, the center and other campus volunteers recycled 40 cubic yards of Styrofoam and 7,347 pounds of cardboard.