Some North Park neighborhood activists have obtained 93 signatures on a petition seeking to have the recycling center at Albertsons closed, claiming transients are looking through their trash cans to redeem bottles and cans at the center.
Calling their cause the “North Park Recycling Nightmare,” many residents complained on their Web site that transients trespass on their property and leave trash on the ground in their hunt for recyclables.
“This is clearly recycling gone wrong!” according to the group’s Web site.
The petition, which is also online at change.org, is aimed at the regional manager at Albertsons. The store, located at 2235 University Ave., has met with residents about their complaints and one manager said Dec. 31, 2012 that the group is “not even reasonable.”
“These people will never be happy,” said a manager, who did not want to be identified. “They were attributing all these problems to the homeless doing recycling, but that’s not true.”
The manager pointed out that Re-Planet, the firm that operates the recycling business on the far side of the Albertsons parking lot, has hired a security guard to be there when the business is open. Signs have been posted which say “No shopping carts … no loitering … no dumping … no cash on premises.”
“It’s much cleaner than it was before,” the manager said.
On the Web site, a resident named Ben wrote, “The only people I EVER see at the recycling center are homeless people lined up, drunk, and with all their carts. They are spreading like a disease through North Park.”
Several residents posted they have been “verbally threatened” and confronted on their own property over people going through their trash and blue recyclable bins. The City picks up the contents of the blue bins every two weeks, and several residents have pointed out that people who take bottles from the bins are stealing from the City.
The cause is also on Facebook, and someone posted without attribution that Albertsons has agreed to the activists’ demands and the site will be closed within a month. The Albertsons manager and Paul Spears, who was described as “our tireless leader,” said Dec. 31, 2012 that is not true.
Spears said he had not seen the Facebook entry and said he is not the group’s leader. “There is no leader,” he said, adding that “I’m one of the 93 signers.”
On the Web site, Spears wrote the center “has attracted scavengers to our local neighborhood by making it convenient for redeeming their stolen bottles and cans.”
People walk or bring their recyclables in cars, and they get a receipt that must be paid by Albertsons.
“We are not railing against the homeless community,” the Web site says. “We are just tired of the confrontations, the trash and filth, the trespassing on our properties at any given hour …”
The group organized many months ago by stuffing information into residents’ mailboxes near the store.
July 1, 2012, a state law went into effect that businesses must recycle, something the Albertsons manager noted.
My home is a couple of miles from Albertson’s and I frequently have gleaners looking in my trash cans for recyclables. We don’t put return-for-deposit items into our trash but take them to a local social service center, Being Alive, which uses them to support their food bank.
Recycling centers keep tons of reusable materials out of the land fills and the oceans.
We are equally close to Vons which also has a recycling center. Possibly if we had more stores (like the chain pharmacies and convenience stores) with recycling centers the problem would be less concentrated.
If it were more stylish for householders to take back their recyclables the poor would give up looking for them in the trash cans.
If the poor were not digging through our trash for cans they might well be digging through it for food. I support Albertson’s and all the other recycling centers.
Good point! That is laughable those “snobby” resident whom complian about this without ever shows undersanding of current ecnomic hardships, nor humenly compasisson to our less forturned fellow humenbeing.
Beside the point, Replant is one of a “Green business” deserves our community’s support. This also bring up the issues of social justice, if people awares that most recycle business located at less wealthy nighberhood such as Logan High, Nathional City, …….those gritty area. Is that fair to those resident living at those area?
Here as a member of LGBT community at Hillcrest area, I understand deeply what is like to be an outcast and under hardship.
If anyone of you want expirance so called “nightmare”, please just go downtown or Balboa Park look at those poor and homeless people on the sidewalk. Or, some of you could even volnteer the upcomming San Diego Alpha Project-23rd Jan “counting the homeless” and get some idea the scops/size of this issue really are!
Shame on those 92 people siged on that pitition, may what comes around go to whats around as those whiner deserves!