By CAROL SOUTH
TRAVERSE CITY -- A recent move left Lisa Maxbauer Price with three gigantic tubs filled with packing materials.
She tried to free cycle the Styrofoam peanuts and bubble wrap but had no takers as fewer people move in winter. Sunday's Daylight Savings Clean Up and Green Up event in downtown Traverse City provided the perfect opportunity to recycle it all.
Held at Parking Lot B downtown between Union and Cass streets, the event featured 16 stations taking everything from household items, batteries and building materials to electronics, light bulbs and scrap metal.
Maxbauer Price stuffed her car with the tubs as well as a toaster oven, baby gate, lamp, household batteries and a laptop. All were taken by volunteers from participating regional recyclers, who will re-purpose, reuse or recycle everything.
"You feel like, 'What do I do with this stuff?'" said Maxbauer Price, who relocated back to Traverse City with her family after 10 years on the East Coast.
Michigan Green Consortium sponsored the spring cleaning, scheduled deliberately around daylight savings. In November, the consortium sponsored their first Clean Up and Green Up around the fall time change.
Comprised of green businesses and stakeholders, the nonprofit, volunteer consortium's first cleanup diverted more than 35,000 pounds and 94 cubic yards of waste from landfills. Sunday's event continued the biannual opportunity that organizers hope becomes a community tradition.
"By associating this with the clock changes, you can always remember it," said Stephen Adcock, board chair for the Michigan Green Consortium.
As in November, cars lined up before the 10 a.m. start time, waiting their turn to circle the parking lot and offload at relevant stations. Detailed signs at each station noted who took what and volunteers sprang into action as cars pulled up.
Items accepted ranged from air conditioners to wire hangers with a list of 65 items in between. The circular recycling route started with Home Depot volunteers taking rechargeable batteries, fluorescent and compact fluorescent bulbs, took a sharp turn at Rifkin's scrap metal and ended with Team Elmer's accepting asphalt, concrete and toilets at the end of the circle.
"I think it's an awesome community event, just look at the diversity here," said Tom BeVier, of Traverse City, who with his son, Hal, brought a sliding door, taken by Odom Reusable Building Materials in Grawn.
The list of unacceptable items was shorter than in November, including only insulation, plate glass, televisions, sinks and windows, oils and lubricants and paints or toxic chemicals.
"We have wonderful people, we can't say enough about our recycling partners who keep saying, 'OK we'll do this, we'll take that,'" Adcock said. "We have people who are re-purposing and others who are actually collecting for end recyclers who are not there."
An air of community party dominated, as residents reduced clutter and waste thanks to area green businesses eager to help.
"People always keep asking what it means, what does green mean?" said Bruce Odom, owner of Odom Reusable Building Materials. "This is what greens means, this is green happening."
For more information on the Michigan Green Consortium, call 947-1688 or see www.mgconline.org.
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