Tuesday is America’s Recycling Day, and three Ventura County businesses will be joining us next week when they receive checks from a low-interest loan program that encourages recycling efforts.
Held annually on November 15th, America Recycle Day is sponsored by Keep America Beautiful, a non-profit organization supported primarily by major corporations and public institutions. Last year, the nonprofit helped him promote about 3,000 related events in all 50 states.
On Mondays and Tuesdays from 8am to 4pm, the Ventura County General Services Agency will be hosting an e-waste collection event in honor of America Recycles Day at the Government Center’s Services Building at 800 S. Victoria Ave. in Ventura. To do. DVDs and CDs can also be donated to county libraries. At the agency’s April event to mark Earth Day, 18 pallets full of e-waste worth about 11,200 pounds of material were collected.
Indeed, community expectations are one of the motivations for recycling. If all your neighbors have well-prepared recycling and organic carts, everyone uses recyclable bins at work, and all fellow guests at social gatherings are following the waste sorting instructions, then you should Failure to recycle can be embarrassing. Evasion of citizen responsibility.
But how do we reach people who don’t respond to such appeals? Indeed, how do we reach people who are fed up with environmental messages in general?
The US Environmental Protection Agency’s America Recycles Day website has a good answer. The site emphasizes that recycling contributes not only to the protection of the environment, but also to “America’s prosperity.” A 2016 EPA study found that recycling and reuse activities in the United States account for 681,000 jobs and $37.8 billion in wages annually.
On Nov. 21, Ventura County commemorative event organizers highlighted the economic benefits of recycling by highlighting three companies that recently received 4% fixed-rate loans through the county’s Recycling Market Development District program. increase. This program is coordinated by the county public works agency.
The low-interest loan comes from state funds derived from landfill chip fee surcharges collected by CalRecycle (the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery).
The entirety of Ventura County is in the Recycle Market Development Zone, with incentives for all local businesses to make products from waste. California has approximately 40 state-designated zones. In addition to financing, Zone staff assist companies with permitting, site selection, obtaining materials for manufacturing, and more.
The general public is invited to the loan check presentations at three locations on November 21st.
• At 8:30 am at the County Government Center, a check for $1.2 million will be presented to Arturo Gonzalez, owner of Progressive Environmental Industries. Gonzalez has a mulching business in Santa Barbara and will soon complete a permit to reopen his second location, his Ojai Valley Organics. County supervisor Matt LaVere and his CalRecycle representative, loan officer Bruce Quigley, present the check.
• At 10am, Supervisor Vianey Lopez tours the Oxnard Pallet Co. at 4524 E. Pleasant Valley Road. She then joins her CalRecycle board and presents a check for $535,000 to the company’s owner, her Beatrice Vasquez. The loan will help the company dismantle and repair non-standard broken used pallets, turning the waste into valuable standard 4-way pallets.
• At 11:45 a.m., Lopez displays product samples at Pinnpack, a manufacturer of recyclable plastic food packaging, at 1151 Pacific Avenue, Oxnard. Lopez joins his CalRecycle, CEO he presents Ira Maroofian with his $11 million check. This amount is the largest loan in the 30-year history of the statewide market development program. The funds will modernize the facilities of large factories that use recycled plastics as part of their raw materials and expand their recycling capacity.
Together, the three companies employ more than 250 people, contribute to local economies through property taxes, sales taxes, donations and purchases from suppliers, and produce valuable products needed by individuals and other businesses. I’m here.
You can contact David Goldstein, Environmental Resources Analyst for the Ventura County Public Works Agency at 805-658-4312 or david.goldstein@ventura.org.
