Are you passionate about the environment?
Are you looking for ways to make a difference?
Recycling Revisited is made up of people who are just like you. Our group’s story began in Burlington, Ontario in 1970. One day while doing dishes in her kitchen, Roberta McGregor came to a startling realization. Beside the sink were a bottle and a can – items that many people would simply throw in the garbage. She thought to herself “My children’s future: the glass in this bottle will never turn back to beach sand, and there isn’t a tin mine in North America to replace the can.” Roberta knew there had to be a better way. She phoned various companies and discovered they would accept large amounts of glass, tin or paper. She suggested to women in the community that they experiment to see if Burlingtonians would participate in recycling pickups. The response was over-whelming.
This local group of women started a massive volunteer citizen action that ran the first sustained, city-wide, multi-material recycling program in Canada. The Citizens’ Committee for Pollution Control (CCPC) had up to 1,000 volunteers at a time and would run the recycling program for 13 years before the City of Burlington took over in 1981.
In 2012, a group of former CCPC recycling pioneers formed a new organization: Recycling Revisited. We’re a small group of people who are passionate about the environment and who want to make a difference in our community. And here’s where we need your help.
Recycling Revisited’s vision is to ensure that the story of this unprecedented citizen action, leading to a municipal first, is brought back into public awareness and memory, and preserved for future generations. We want to tell our important story in ways that can be used in educational, historical and organizational settings now and in the future.
You donation will help inspire a future generation of environmentalists and show them what can be done in communities of concerned citizens. We hope that in the current wave of environmental concern, we can inspire individuals and groups to plan and carry out action programs that will have positive collective impacts on our ecosystems and communities.
We have two major projects underway: the completion of a 45-minute historical documentary film, and a 45th Anniversary Reunion Event for former participants in CCPC’s recycling program, with invited speakers. Other programs to preserve and share our story include: filming interviews with former participants to form an “Interview Library” which will be donated to the local Historical Society, library and the Recycling Council of Ontario; the continuing development of name lists with current contact information of former participants; telling our story through the web and social media; and archiving of our photos, documents and historical material for donation to accompany the Interview Library.
Your donation will help with costs for items such as: the filming of the documentary, fees for charitable registration, archiving, the reunion event and more.
Donors will be recognized on our website, www.recyclingrevisited.com, on social media, in the credits of the documentary and on posters at the reunion event.
Please give today to ensure that this important historical and cultural story can be shared and serve as a positive reminder of what can happen when people get together behind a common purpose.
