On Saturday, April 22, 2023, RecycleMore staff, Reka Abraham, Lisa Borreani and Webster Nguyen, joined The Richmond Community Housing Developing Corporation (CHDC), Urban Tilth, and The Watershed Project for an Earth Day Wild Cat Creek Cleanup and school path painting project. The event was well attended with over 100 volunteers assisting with the various service projects, which started and ended at Lucky A’s Baseball field and also included celebration activities.

The creek clean-up began with a recognition of the former indigenous stewards of the land and a safety training.

 

Wild Cat Creek runs right along Verde Elementary School. The creek had accumulations of illegal dumping and litter that had flowed downstream. The volunteers cleared the trash from many of these areas, preventing it from making its way to the San Francisco Bay.

 

Student volunteers from Verde Elementary School cleaned and painted the sidewalk to beautify and promote safe routes to school.

 

RecycleMore had a booth and collaborated with The Watershed Project team members with fun activities for the children and families in attendance.

 

At the end of the Earth Day events, all of the partners were presented with certificates from District 1 Supervisor John Gioia and Richmond Mayor Eduardo Martinez for their Earth Day efforts.

Thank you to Kalu Dennis and team from the CHDC for organizing this great event!

See you next Earth Day!

 

 

 

With spring cleaning on everyone’s minds, it is important to consider the products you use in your home! RecycleMore offers three tips you need to reduce the hazardous products in your homes, and the hazardous waste in our environment. Not only will your family, friends, and loved ones benefit from removing hazardous products in your home, but our communities and environment will benefit from the shift towards a more environmentally friendly future.

 

1. Consider the Alternatives

While the function of a household cleaner is to clean, sanitize, and help clean your home, that does not mean that these products are all safe for your home or environment. Using resources like the ThinkDirtyApp, you can scan products, learn about their ingredients, and find cleaner alternatives. Additionally, looking into household cleaning recipes can be a fun, sustainable, and an affordable approach to cleaning with products that you know are safe for you and those around you. For example, vinegar, soap, baking soda, and water are all items that are generally found in the home that serve as key ingredients in homemade cleaning recipes. Products like a metal drain snake to unclog drains can be a much safer and environmentally friendly alternative to drain cleaners, if possible.

 

2. Buy What You Need

It can be overwhelming to look for the right cleaning agent for the job; especially when there are aisles and aisles of products for every part of your home. Ultimately, this can leave you with multiple hazardous cleaners in your home. You can avoid this with all-purpose cleaners that can do multiple jobs without adding numerous cleaners in your cabinets. With the consideration of creating homemade all-purpose cleaners, you can create a safer, more affordable alternative to the multiple cleaners tucked under your kitchen or bathroom sink.

If you must buy more than one, consider the use and how much you might need to be able to get the job completed.

 

3. Check the Label

As mentioned earlier, while cleaning products clean your home, the ingredients in these products may have harmful impacts to your loved ones and the environment we live in. Read the label and educate yourself on the ingredients and be sure to follow the usage instructions.

 

 

 

Consider these tips to make more mindful decisions in regards to what you bring into your home and ultimately help reduce the number of household hazardous cleaning products in your residence.

If you do have household hazardous waste, please do not put them in your garbage (it is illegal). If you are a resident of West Contra Costa County, bring your unwanted items to the Hazardous Waste Collection Facilities in Richmond and El Cerrito. To learn more and how to properly dispose of these items, click here for more information.

 

 

Each day we make choices that impact the earth: the transportation we choose, how we manage energy around our home, where we put our empty soda cans.

We also affect the environment every time we take out our wallets to make a purchase.

Responsible consuming is the practice of buying environmentally friendly and socially just goods and services, and avoiding those that aren’t.

Reducing your own carbon footprint is a good enough reason to spend wisely. But advocates of responsible consuming point to an even greater benefit: influencing manufacturers, distributors and shop owners to deliver safer, better products.

Whether you are irked by excessive plastic packaging or toilet paper made from old growth forest trees, know that by making thoughtful and educated purchases, you can make a difference. Every time you make a purchase, you are casting a vote with your wallet.

 

Here are some tips for making responsible consuming a regular habit in your household:

• Get educated. A great primer to responsible consumption, including numerous articles on the subject, can be found at Sustainable Communities.
• Reduce single-use plastic consumption. Say “no” to single-use plastic utensils/straws and bring your own bag to the store. Invest in a reusable water bottle.
• Ask yourself, “Do I really need this?” If yes, first review what reuse options are available before buying new.
• Buy green whenever possible. Many online retailers, such as Eco-Products sell goods made from recyclable and/or sustainably produced materials. Green America’s National Green Pages features hundreds of business listings. Reduce the need to purchase new clothes, see what you can reuse, and consider to thrift shop to buy second-hand.
• How you use your product is just as important as what you buy. Recycle your post-consumer recycled paper, turn out your energy-efficient lights when you aren’t home, and bike to work even if there is a Prius sitting in your driveway.
• Join a campaign to change how a product is made if you are dissatisfied with how a manufacturer is producing it. For example, the California Product Stewardship Council helped students at Sun Valley Elementary School in San Rafael, CA, with an online petition on Change.org asking Crayola to start a take-back program for plastic markers. Not only was the campaign successful, but it also inspired other companies to start similar take-back programs. Phone calls and emails to manufacturers and lawmakers can be effective, too.

Hope these ideas will help you think sustainably for this Earth Day and help make lifestyle choices for more years to come.

 

Here is a link to activities and events around Earth Day in Contra Costa for 2023:

Contra Costa Earth Day Events 2023

Plastic Pollution has become one of the more pressing environmental issues, as rapidly increasing production of disposable plastics product overwhelms the world’s ability to properly collect discarded plastics.   SOURCE: National Geographic

 

What is Plastic Pollution?

Plastic Pollution is the accumulation of synthetic plastic products to the point that it creates problems for the health of wildlife and their habitats as well for human populations.

 

“A Whopping 91 Percent of Plastic Isn’t Recycled”

                            – Source: National Geographic

 

Plastic is proving dangerous to our planet, health, and wildlife, and is a rapidly growing segment of municipal solid waste (MSW). While plastics are found in all major MSW categories, the containers and packaging category had the most plastic tonnage at over 14.5 million tons in 2018, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  In 2018, landfills received 27 million tons of plastic. This was 18.5 percent of all MSW landfilled.

SOURCE: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

 

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We Can’t Recycle Our Way Out of Plastic Pollution

Help end plastic pollution. Learn more from a presentation and discussion during a RecycleMore Board Meeting on September 8, 2022 with Martin Bourque, Executive Director at the Ecology Center, on the topic of “We Can’t Recycle Our Way Out of Plastic Pollution”.

This presentation is an educational process of learning about the plastics food chains and highlighting of what is truly happening in recycling and bringing matters to light. The Ecology Center has been keeping an eye on and tracking of where plastics goes and what happens to it.

Plastic packaging has taken over the recycling process. Not everything is recyclable. There are only two types of plastics* that can be actively sorted and recycled.

*CalRecycle recently did a Statewide Commission on Recycling Markets and Curbside Recycling Report. From this study, it was determined, what types of plastic were recyclable and not recyclable.

Only two types of plastics were identified as recyclable with a total of 15 items:

#1 – PET Plastics used for beverage containers such as water bottles.

#2 – HDPE Plastics used for containers such as milk, juice, laundry detergent and cleaners, etc. 

 

Where does the plastic go?

Martin shows the path of a shipment of mixed, low-grade, non-bottle, plastic container bales from the San Francisco Bay area to Guangdong Province, China, informal sector area for plastic processing. This was eventually brought to a recycling facility, which was an auction yard. Materials were auctioned off bale by bale and put on pickup trucks which were brought to smaller facilities and backyards of people where family businesses were then to sort the items. Because of the environmental degradation to such an extent of air and water pollution, these facilities were closed by the government.Processing then quickly moved to other countries like Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia, with no infrastructure to manage the materials properly.

These plastics are like sponges for toxins that can get into the soil of agriculture fields because of the informal nature of facilities with materials not contained and managed properly. This becomes organic pollutants, and now into the food systems, cause extreme health impacts and issues. And, when the rain pours, a lot of the materials get washed into the rivers which ends up in the oceans and causes more problems.

 

Markets for plastics?

Finding markets for exporting plastic waste is very challenging. If there are any markets, they are very limited and most likely are not regulated. This is a problem and will continue to cause harm to our planet, our health, and wildlife. The plastic industry is saying all the plastics is recyclable and to collect it all. Unfortunately, the burden is put on waste management agencies, waste haulers, and municipalities.

Mexico has become largely a market to take plastics, however, they most likely are making cement from these materials. When plastic (and other materials) are burned at unregulated cement kilns to make cement and cheap energy, it undercuts recycling efforts and worsens air quality and is like “moving the landfill from the ground to the sky”.  Most of the fuels used in the cement manufacturing process, emit planet-warming gases. This is a direct link, in addition of methane being produced, to climate change.

 

What to do with all the plastic?

The cost to bring plastic materials to the recycling centers, sort, and dispose of it can be expensive. Therefore, a decision needs to be made to only collect the items that are truly recyclable and marketable. This will also save on processing costs. Consumers need to be more educated on what is recyclable and what is not recyclable. For the plastic items that are not recyclable, they should go to the landfills rather then dumped and burned in other markets and nations.

 

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Martin Bourque is the Executive Director at the Ecology Center in Berkeley, California. Martin has led Ecology Center since 2000 and has leveraged local direct community service program to have state and national impact.  Under Martin’s leadership, he has led the Ecology Center to become a high impact engine for change with grassroots effort. The Ecology Center is a nonprofit organization that focuses on improving the health and the environmental impacts of urban residents. Their mission is to inspire and build sustainable, healthy, and just future for the East Bay area and beyond.

Martin can be reached at [email protected].

 

Resources:

1) Video Presentation:  Video – Length 1:04:15.16 seconds

CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO

 

2) PPT Presentation

CLICK HERE FOR POWERPOINT

 

3) Other Articles

Recycling plastic is practically impossible, and the problem is getting worse (From NPR)

We never got good at recycling plastic. Some states are trying a new approach (From NPR)

With the holidays around the corner, now is the perfect time to plan and prepare for the coming festivities. This season, RecycleMore is sharing tips and tricks you need to precycle your way through the holidays. “Precycling” is the act of making a choice to avoid single-use products and instead buy reusable, unpackaged, or recyclable products. Read for more information on exploring precycling through decorations, holiday meals, gifts, and more.

1) Holiday Decorations
Decorations are an essential and exciting part of all holiday festivities! This year, consider visiting your local thrift store to help bring the holiday spirit. Visiting neighborhood online reuse groups such as Facebook Marketplace, Buy Nothing, or Nextdoor are also wonderful alternatives to thrifting your way through the holidays.  Getting creative with your friends and family and giving new life to used clothing and materials is a wonderful way to build community, host a series of art activities, and incorporate sustainability practices in your home!

2) Holiday Meals
Unsure what dish you are going to delight your guest with this holiday dinner? Try getting inspiration from the ingredients you have at home! According to the USDA, around 40% of food purchased for holiday meals is thrown out yearly. Emphasizing on foods you have readily available at home not only saves money but saves the planet too. Planning and making a list before you shop for your holiday meals can help ensure that you only buy what you need. Additionally, having reusable containers for your family and friends is a perfect way to ensure leftovers have a second life as a to-go care package.

For healthy holiday recipes, check out Urban Tilth’s recipe page at Urbantilth.org/recipe. Be sure to also check out food sustainability sites like savethefood.com, stopfoodwaste.org, stilltasty.org  to find recipes and storage suggestions that extend the freshness of your food.

3) Holiday Gifts & Packaging
Paper grocery bags, newspaper, fabric, and reusable gift bags are a perfect way to wrap your presents and save money on wrapping paper. Gifts that are durable or can be handed down generationally are excellent ways to ensure your gifts are thoughtful, sustainable, and perfect for your loved ones.

 

Precycling is one way to help reduce your holiday waste. Keep these ideas and others in mind when planning, preparing, and shopping for your holiday activities.

 

Happy Holidays!

 

Junk mail may seem like just a nuisance cluttering up your mailbox, but all those catalogs and ads take a toll on the environment. 

More than 100 million trees’ worth of bulk mail arrive in American mailboxes.

Where does it end up?

• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that 60% of all junk mail ends up in the landfills and is not recycled. That adds 1 billion pounds of waste to landfills each year.  
• Approximately 44% of junk mail goes to the landfills where it produces methane, a greenhouse gas 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
• The junk mail’s annual carbon footprint creates 51.5 million metric tons of greenhouse gases each year – equivalent to the emissions generated by heating about 13 million homes during the winter, according to the nonprofit ForestEthics.

You may think you don’t have time to tackle that pile of credit card offers and coupons on the kitchen table, but here are two simple ways you can cut down on the bulk of your junk mail in just minutes. These two options are online services you can use to have your name removed from catalog, credit card lists, and other database lists.

Option 1: CatalogChoice

HOW IT WORKS
After you join this free website (not an app), simply search for the type of junk mail you are already being marketed to and want to avoid: catalog, credit card offers, phone book, or charity donation request. Pick a mailing option (no delivery, delivery two or four times a year, etc.), and CatalogChoice will send the request to the company for you. Your CatalogChoice dashboard lists the companies and organizations they have contacted and updates you when a company has confirmed your request – so you don’t have to keep track of all that information yourself. Since Catalog Choice is a non-profit organization, unaffiliated with the mail marketing industry, they accept donations to keep this service going.

WHO SHOULD USE IT
Anyone who wants to manage their junk mail through a website, doesn’t have a smartphone or wants to support a nonprofit junk-mail-reduction service.

Option 2: PaperKarma

HOW IT WORKS
Much like CatalogChoice, PaperKarma forwards a request to the companies sending you junk mail and monitors all your requests for you. But, while CatalogChoice only operates as a website, PaperKarma is a free app, available for Android, iOS and Windows smartphones. However, they have the free option is limited, and allows you only 4 free submissions. Then, at that point, you will be prompted to pay for the subscription and offers 4 different pricing options from monthly, 6 months, annually, or lifetime. The process to submit a request is convenient and fast: Just snap a photo of your address on the piece of junk mail, and PaperKarma will take care of the rest.

WHO SHOULD USE IT
The smartphone addict, the super busy person that wants to save time and someone that likes to use smartphone applications.

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With whichever service you choose, remember to be patient in your quest to reduce your junk mail: It may take a few months to start seeing results, since many mailing labels are printed ahead of time.

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On Saturday, April 23, 2022, RecycleMore staff, Andy Schneider and April Canavan, joined The Richmond Community Housing Developing Corporation (CHDC), Urban Tilth, and The Watershed Project for an Earth Day Wildcat Creek Cleanup and school path painting project. The event was well attended with over 50 volunteers assisting with the various projects.

The creek clean-up began with a recognition of the former indigenous stewards of the land and a safety training.

 

Wildcat Creek runs right along Verde Elementary School. The creek had numerous accumulations of illegal dumping and litter that had flowed downstream. The volunteers cleared the trash from many of these areas, preventing it from making its way to the Bay.

 

 

 

 

The collected trash and bulky items nearly filled a large debris box, donated by Republic Services.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Student volunteers from Verde Elementary School cleaned and painted the sidewalk to beautify and promote Safe Routes to School.

 

At the end of the Earth Day Celebration, all of the partners were presented with certificates from District 1 Supervisor John Gioia and Richmond Mayor Tom Butt for their Earth Day efforts. The volunteers were given special Earth Day reusable shopping bags which included information on environmental programs and actions as well as a RecycleMore reusable water bottle.

 

Thank you to Victor Jimenez, Tania Pulido, and Janie Holland from the CHDC for organizing this great event!

 

 

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April is Earth Month – Learn how to live a sustainable lifestyle during the month of April and all year long. Our planet is home to over 8 million living species. According to NASA scientists, human activities (primarily the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, petroleum, and natural gas) have fundamentally increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, causing global warming and climate change all over the world. It is vital that humans work together with the natural environment in order to live sustainably and preserve biodiversity for future generations. The issue of climate change globally is complex, but there are many small changes you can make in your daily life that will reduce the overall carbon footprint.

Here are some helpful lifestyle sustainable tips, inspired from the Common Wanderer Blog:

1. THINK SUSTAINABLE CLOTHING AND BUY SECOND-HAND

• Thrift shop and buy used, second-hand, clothing.
• Invest in sustainable quality clothing brands that last for years.
• Reduce the need to purchase new clothes.

It takes a lot of resources to produce new clothing, so it is much better to buy things second-hand and consider shopping more sustainably.

According to Earth.org, the fast fashion industry consumes a huge amount of water, around 93 billion cubic meters, and much of it is contaminated by toxic chemicals. It takes 2,720 liters of water (as much as you’d drink in a three-year period) to make one T-shirt. Your favorite pair of jeans? It takes almost 10,000 liters of water into producing them and dying them blue. A big reason why these seemingly simple clothing garments use so much water is because they’re made from cotton. Cotton is the largest user of water among all agricultural commodities – it takes 20,000 liters just to produce one kilogram of cotton.

The increase in demand on fast fashion have increased so much that 60% of clothing fabric is made from plastic-based materials like polyester and acrylic, because it is cheap to manufacture and is durable, which makes polyester the world’s most frequently used plastic material in textile production. Polyester is closely related to the oil industry; It is a byproduct of petroleum production (plastic), so it never truly breaks down. The trouble with this type of fabric is that when it is washed, it releases very small plastic fibers that pass through the wastewater filtration systems into our rivers and oceans. With this process, clothing produces half a million tons of microplastics each year, according to Concordia University.

Your best option is to buy used clothes and donate your unwanted clothing and/or buy quality sustainable clothing (if/when you choose to buy new).

Watch this Tedx Talks video with Breton Lorway about the impact of consumer goods in the environment: Saving the Environment from Consumerism

2. REDUCE SINGLE-USE PLASTIC CONSUMPTION

• Invest in a reusable water bottle.
• Say no to single-use plastic utensils/straws and bring your own bag to the store.
• Choose zero waste toiletries, like solid shampoo bars, safety razors, etc.

It is challenging to reduce your plastic consumption when most of the products purchased are sold and packaged in plastic material. As a consumer, you can start in small ways – for example, buying a reusable water bottle and stop purchasing plastic water bottles, or bringing your own bag to the grocery store. Consider adopting a Zero-Waste Lifestyle. According to Center for EcoTechnology, Zero-Waste is a movement to reduce the amount one consumes and consequently throws away. This lifestyle is one of the most sustainable ways of living because it reduces pollution and the number of materials sent to the landfill. Zero-Waste lifestyles have recently become popular and has opened up people’s eyes on how much plastic waste is around the world.

Watch this Tedx Talks video with Lauren Singer about living a Zero-Waste life: Why I Live a Zero Waste Life

3. EAT PLANT-BASED FOOD PRODUCTS

• Eat one plant-based meal a day for a year; It will save almost 200,000 gallons of water!
• Find plant-based alternatives staple food items (i.e. plant-based milk, yogurt, and creamer).
• Transform favorite dishes (i.e. pizza, pasta, and stir-fry) to include more veggies.

Going fully vegetarian or vegan is difficult if meat is a regular part of your diet, but you can start small. Vegetables are not only very nutritious and essential to a balanced diet, but also do not require as many resources to grow and harvest. On the other hand, raising livestock is more complicated – it requires animal feed, takes up more habitable land, and cows produce methane gas emissions, which is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It is important to incorporate more vegetables into your diet and to reduce your meat consumption because it will make a difference for the environment and your health.

Watch this educational video from Vox, about cutting down your meat consumption:  The Diet that Helps Fight Climate Change

4. REDUCE FOOD WASTE

• Have a well-thought-out meal plan and buy only what you need.
• Freeze excess produce and add it to your food while cooking. Old veggies still make for good soups, stews, and curries.
• Freezing leftover perishable ingredients can also increase the longevity of your food, so they are fresh when you are ready to use them.
• Compost leftover or unused food.

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 2021 Report “From Farm to Kitchen: The Environmental Impacts of U.S. Food Waste”, one-third of the food produced, in the United States, is never eaten, wasting the resources used to produce it and creating a myriad of environmental impacts. Food waste that ends up in the landfills also generates potent greenhouse gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide, causes climate change and have global warming potentials 25 times greater than carbon dioxide. Fruits and vegetables are the most wasted foods, followed by dairy and eggs. Food waste is the single most common material landfilled and incinerated in the U.S. comprising 24 and 22 percent of landfilled and combusted municipal solid waste, respectively.

The average American family wastes $1,866 of food annually, according to Stop Food Waste Day.  Visit Stop Food Waste Day Website to take the pledge and to learn more about how to reduce your food waste.

For more information, watch this video from Our Changing Climate on food waste and climate change: Our Changing Climate – Food Waste causes Climate Change. Here’s how we stop it.

5. CONTINUE TO EDUCATE YOURSELF

There are many educational books, websites, and podcasts you can reference to continue to educate yourself. Hopefully these will inspire you, your family, and friends, to never stop learning and to make a difference.

 

Podcasts:

Living Planet

The topics of these weekly podcasts are environmental stories from around the world.  And for this episode, “Climate Misinformation: How Do We Tackle It?”.

 

 

A Sustainable Mind

A Sustainable Mind is a podcast series created for the earth-conscious individual. The topic of this podcast is “A Sustainable Mind – Environment & Sustainability Podcast”, by Marjorie Alexander

 

 

Resources Radio

Resources Radio is a weekly podcast that features interviews with researchers and leading experts about climate change, energy, ecosystems, and more.

 

 

Books:

Here is a list from “Earthwatch.org” of 23 must read science books about the environment chosen by Earthwatch scientists.

Here is a list from “We Are Teachers” of 42 books for Earth Day to inspire children.

 

Websites/Blogs:

Sustainable living is becoming more of a mainstream philosophy which a person takes to actively make a practical change and positively impacts climate change and environmental issues. You can learn a lot from people from what they are doing and how they are making an impact. Simply shifting your lifestyle in a way to consume and waste less products will make a huge difference.

Here is a list of eco-friendly blogs you might want to consider following.

 

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Local Environmental Stewardship

This Earth Month and beyond, take the time to evaluate your current lifestyle and ask yourself if you are incorporating the tips above. It starts with YOU! If you are ready to take another step toward environmental stewardship, below is a list of some Earth Month events happening during the month of April in the West Contra Costa County area:

 

1. Richmond Greenway Gardens Earth Day Celebration

Saturday, April 23, 2022:  10 am – 2 pm | Unity Park Plaza, 1605 Ohio Ave, Richmond, CA 94804

Come celebrate Earth Day with Urban Tilth, Groundwork Richmond, and more! There will be many activities for the entire family, including mural painting, planting a flower garden, beautifying playgrounds, building free fruit tree stands for the edible forest, watershed swale planting, and weeding.

Register HERE

 

2. San Pablo Earth Day Creek Cleanup Event

Saturday, April 23, 2022: 10 am – 12 noon | Wildcat Creek at Davis Park, 1655 Folsom Ave, San Pablo, CA 94806

FREE snacks and clean-up supplies will be provided. Please wear a mask and closed-toe shoes.

Call for more information: 510-215-3066

 

3. North Richmond Wildcat Creek Clean-Up

Saturday, April 23, 2022: 9 am – 11 am | 1925 Fred Jackson Way, Richmond, CA 94801

Show your love for the earth by helping to restore Wildcat Creek. Join Urban Tilth, The Watershed Project, and friends and neighbors in removing trash and debris that harms wildlife, and learn about plans to restore the habitat for rainbow trout.

Register HERE

 

4. City of El Cerrito Earth Day Week Work Celebrations

Week of April 23 and April 30, 2022

If you are celebrating Earth week and taking action whether in a group for out-door cleanups, work parties, or for yourself, visit the City of El Cerrito Earth Day Celebration to learn more about what you can do for any earth-friendly activity.

 

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In addition, feel free to download this reference document and post to your refrigerator for these sustainable tips to keep handy all year long! [CLICK HERE]

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If everyone in the U.S. recycled their clothing and textiles for one year instead of throwing them away, it would save 30.6 million metric tons of carbon emissions. That’s the same as taking all the cars in Los Angeles off the road for one year. So how can you keep clothes out of the landfill? Here are your best options:

 

Sell

Are your unwanted clothes still valuable? For-profit secondhand stores are a quick and easy way to cash in. In addition to selling locally, there are also national chains, including Buffalo Exchange, Clothes Mentor, Crossroads Trading, Once Upon a Child and Plato’s Closet . There are also a host of websites and applications that will help you sell or swap your old threads with just a few clicks on your smartphone, including eBay, Mercari, Poshmark, swap.com, thredUP, and Tradesy.

Here is a local consignment store in the RecycleMore jurisdiction that may be of consideration:

Joceannes Consignment

Address: 448 Valley View Rd Suite C, El Sobrante, CA 94803

Phone: (510) 758-1200

 

 

Donate for Reuse

If you think your clothes may not be new enough to sell, donating locally is an easy way to give your wardrobe future use. Check whether an organization takes only gently used items or items in any condition—they can easily be a one stop shop for all your old clothes. Many organizations that accept donated clothing for resale will also recycle clothes that are torn, stained, or worn, and will help keep them out of the landfill.

You have two choices when it comes to donating garments:

Non-profit organizations raise money for charitable causes. Goodwill, for example, uses the revenue from sales of donated clothing to fund job training programs for seniors, veterans and people with disabilities. Another benefit of this option is that your donation may be tax deductible. Goodwill has a PDF guide to help you estimate the value of your donation. Other national charities that accept clothing donations include The Salvation Army, Society of St. Vincent de Paul, Vietnam Veterans of America and PlanetAid. If you want to know more about an organization before you donate, look it up on CharityWatch or Charity Navigator.

For-profit companies may donate a portion of their profits. Some major clothing retailers such as H&M, Levi Strauss & Co. and The North Face encourage customers to bring back old clothes from any brand to their retail locations, so they can be reused or recycled.. Other for-profit clothing collectors include Savers, Community Recycling and American Textile Recycling Service.

Here are some local thrift stores in the RecycleMore jurisdiction that may be of consideration:

Goodwill Stores & Donation Centers of the Eastbay

Goodwill – Richmond

Address: 12341 San Pablo Ave, Richmond, CA 94805

Phone: (510) 965-1833

 

Goodwill – San Pablo Town Center

Address: 100A San Pablo Towne Center, San Pablo, CA 94806

Phone: (510) 307-9886

 

Good Stuff Thrift Shop

Address: 10313 San Pablo Ave, El Cerrito, CA 94530

Phone: (510) 528-9455

 

Turnabout Thrift Shop

Address: 10052 San Pablo Ave, El Cerrito, CA 94530

Phone: (510) 525-7844

 

Treasure Hunt

Address: 1189 San Pablo Ave, Pinole, CA 94564

Phone: (510) 506-1680

 

ReUse Station – El Cerrito

Drop off clothing at the El Cerrito Recycling Center ReUse Station trailers for reuse that is sold at local thrift stores. Proceeds support the El Cerrito Recycling Center programs. Acceptable items include clothing, small pieces of furniture, children’s toys, small countertop appliances, etc. Click here to find a detailed list of acceptable textile and clothing items for drop off. 

 

Use it Again – El Cerrito

The El Cerrito Recycling Center has USAagain bins available for drop off for textiles and clothing as well. Donated items are sent abroad. Acceptable items include clothes, shoes, tablecloths, towels, bedding, blankets, bedspreads, comforters, etc., in reusable condition. Click here to find out more information.

 

Recycle

If your unwanted garments aren’t in good enough condition to be worn again, you can still keep them out of the landfill by recycling them. Many organizations that accept clothing for resale will also recycle clothes that are torn, stained or worn. Some major clothing recyclers include Goodwill, The Salvation Army, Society of St. Vincent de Paul, Savers, Blue Jeans Go Green, American Textile Recycling Service and USAgain.

 

Remember to Reduce

Another way you can help keep clothes out of the landfill is to consider buying secondhand and buying clothing that is ethically and sustainably made. The more we reduce our consumption in the first place, the less material we’re responsible for recycling, and helps the environment. And, buying secondhand helps makes us feel good about our actions,  helps the money stay in the economy, and supports the green living movement.

Here are some interesting facts around the Thrift Store Industry Statistics and Trends:

• “The purchase of one used item instead of a new one can reduce its carbon footprint by up to 82%. If everyone would purchase just one used item in the next 12 months, it would save 11 billion kilowatts of energy, 25 billion gallons of water, and 449 million pounds of waste”. (Green Story)
• The equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is either incinerated or landfilled every second of each day. That means there are 108 million tons of non-renewable resources used to produce clothing each year that will never see wear, accounting for up to 25% of the global carbon budget. (The Shelf)
• “60% of consumers say that they would be more loyal to a specific brand if there was a recycling program offered as part of the experience.” (GlobalData)

 

Ripped, Stained, or Torn Clothing?

After repurposing your old clothing and they have reached their life expectancy, the best option is to throw the items in the trash. According to the Council for Textile Recycling, only about 10-20% of clothing that gets donated is sold by the donation organization because it is no longer in sellable condition. So, before you donate all your unwanted clothes at the nearest thrift shop, take the time to go through them to determine which will have the best chance of being resold.

 

On December 10, 2021, Craft in America, a Peabody award-winning series on PBS, will be airing an episode on jewelry, which will feature a Bay Area artist named Harriete Estel Berman who highlights the problems of plastic pollution through her work. She is now bringing attention to the environmental issues caused by plastic pollution by upcycling discarded plastic waste to make art and jewelry, including intricate bracelets. According to Berman, she uses “the humblest of materials taken from the waste stream of our society to examine the values of our society.”

Berman is a resident of San Mateo and has made a living through jewelry making, sculpting, and metalsmithing. Berman holds a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts (BFA) in Metalsmithing from Syracuse University and a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from Tyler School of Art, Temple University.

To learn more about Harriete Estel Berman and her thought-provoking work, tune into PBS for the Jewelry episode on December 10^th, from 9:00pm – 10:00pm or anytime via streaming on the Craft in America website here. To view more of Berman’s amazing post-consumer recycled plastic collection creations, you can visit her website here.

 

 

Photo source: www.harrieteestelberman.com