SANTA CRUZ — Every Friday through the end of August, the crew at the Santa Cruz Resource Recovery Facility is offering free tours of the recycling facility on the outskirts of the city. The program started earlier this month and will continue each Friday until Aug. 23 with tours at 10 a.
m. and 1 p.m.
at the recycling center at 605 Dimeo Lane, Santa Cruz. “We’re thrilled to invite the community on our updated tour,” said Waste Reduction Assistant and tour guide Julia Ribeiro. “Most people are familiar with the three Rs — reduce, reuse and recycle.
On our tour, we’ll also touch on the importance of two other Rs — refuse and rethink.” The tours are suited for families, friend groups and individuals curious about what happens behind the scenes at the recycling center, but are limited to 20 people per tour. Children must be at least 8 years old to participate and youth ages 8 to 18 must be accompanied by an adult.
During the 90-minute tours, visitors will see and smell firsthand what happens to the approximately 30 tons to 50 tons of waste material that Santa Cruz residents throw in their recycling bins daily. Tour participants will learn about what items can and cannot be recycled, the new food scraps processing program, and about the problems with “wish-cycling” or tossing questionable items in the recycling bin with the notion that a worker will sort it out later. Outside of recycling, tour participants will learn strategies to reduce waste in general, suc.
