THE RECYCLING CENTER

El Cerrito, California


The Recycling Center is a municipally-operated facility for residents and businesses of El Cerrito and the surrounding area to bring materials for recycling and reuse. The Center also operates as the hub for the City’s Environmental Services Division and Curbside Recycling Operations, providing a “one stop” resource for all things regarding environmental sustainability in the City.


Material Resource Regeneration
The Recycling Center accepts a wide variety of materials from standard recycling to more hard to recycle materials. Accepted items include: mixed paper, cardboard, glass containers, plastic beverage containers, other plastic bottles, scrap metals (no major appliances), newspaper, white office paper, automobile batteries, batteries, fluorescent tubes and CFLs, sharps and syringes, pharmaceuticals, used cooking oil, electronic waste, toner cartridges, used motor oil and metal filters, white block styrofoam, textiles.

In addition to recycling, The Center offers reuse options through material donation and an Exchange Zone where residents can bring accepted items to share with others in the community and/or take items that have been offered. The Exchange Zone is for smaller items such as books, office supplies, housewares, hardware, toys and games, hangers. Other items such as furniture, clothing, small kitchen appliances are able to be donated for resale at local thrift stores and the proceeds go to supporting the operation of The Recycling Center programs.

A compost giveaway takes place every third Saturday of the month for El Cerrito residents and businesses. Each household or business can receive up to 5 cubic yards of compost.

Education + Events
The Recycling Center offers free public tours of the facility monthly.

Public + Spatial Amenities
The Recycling Center is a LEED certified facility through its innovative building and landscape techniques: solar power for the office buildings and 30% of the site’s operations, construction for maximum natural light exposure, reuse building material, collection and storage of rainwater for flushing toilets and irrigating the native plant gardens, on-site stormwater treatment through bioswales.

The Center has plans to install EV charging for community use and expand the solar array for greater energy independence.

Alternative Structures + Community Wealth Building
As a municipally-owned facility, The Center operates under local government regulations and policies. Despite this governance, the space still brings a wealth of resources to communities through reuse initiatives and supports the safe and effective management of waste that does not exist elsewhere in the city.




REFERENCES
City of El Cerrito Website
Noll & Tam Architects Website