Santa Cruz Residents Encouraged to Attend Educational Tour of Recycling Facility

Curious and interested residents in Santa Cruz, Cali will be able to take a tour of their local recycling facility throughout the month of August.

Waste Reduction Assistant Caylie Soon of Santa Cruz Publix Works welcomes residents in the area to visit the facility as she will escort groups through the massive building, educating those who attend on recycling.

“Just clarifying to people that this is way bigger than just throwing something into the blue bin and thinking that it’s a magical portal,” said Soon. “There’s people here and it’s a big undertaking, so I like being able to expose that bigger picture to people.”

Soon mentions that a lot of people have misconceptions about recycling. Notably, people possess too many “wishcycling” behaviors and don’t understand that tossing anything into recycling is ok, as someone else will figure it out. Which isn’t the case.

“A lot of people think that this idea of wishcycling is OK,” said Soon. “They think that if they just put it in, somebody will take care of it or a machine will sort it out, but it’s actually way more problematic.”

The first part of Soon’s tour focuses on the six Rs, compared to the often quoted 3 Rs. These include reuse, reduce, and recycle as well as the added Rs of rethink, refuse, and repair.

“Recycling is a tool that we have, and it’s a wonderful tool,” she said. “But we need to start thinking up that R chain and start reducing and refusing all of this in the first place.”

Read the full article here.