The Ancient Recycling Center and the first Earth Day

When I was in college in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the first Earth Day was celebrated.  I was at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, an Appalachian setting in Southeastern Ohio.  An activist on campus wanted to start a recycling operation in the dormitory complexes on campus.

The dorms at Ohio U. were organized into groups called "greens" because dormitories were clustered around grassy courtyards.  There was a West Green, An East Green, A South Green etc. Activists and organizers were pulled together and an operation of 100 gallon metal barrels was implemented in the basement garage areas of the dormitories on all the greens.  Several metal barrels were deployed to collect glass and newsprint,mostly, as the plastic water bottle had not been quite born yet.

Volunteers like myself were scheduled and assigned to sort and process the recyclables.  I most vividly remember processing the glass jars and bottles.  In order to reduce the bulk and volume of glass jars and bottles, the glass had to be broken.  To do this, we donned safety goggles and gloves, and took a brick and repeatedly dropped it into the barrels holding the glass until all the bottles were broken down. Very dangerous, but, quite necessary.

Once full, our oil barrels were transported by pickup truck to an empty unused airport hangar at an old airport outside of town. Sometimes, I was scheduled to work in the airport hangar warehousing facility as well.  From there, purchasers of our materials could easily drive up and load what they were interested in onto larger trucks for transport.

Within a year of operation, this ancient, simple, primitive recycling system was generating revenue for the town of Athens, Ohio and the entire operation grew to such a point, that the town took the operation over from our motley crew of college kids who started it off and proved it was possible.

 Its amazing to see how recycling is done today from those primitive beginnings we had around the time of the first Earth day.  CLICK HERE TO WATCH A SHORT VIDEO OF SINGLE STREAM RECYLCING TODAY