Before the Sacramento Regional Conservation Corps cleaned up the area in Yuba City with the CalRecycle grant. Photo courtesy of Sacramento Regional Conservation Corps

YUBA CITY (MPG) - The numbers on the CalRecyle home page continue to rise.

As of press time, the state agency reports the collection of nearly 500 million bottles and cans and billions of pounds of electronic waste. Not to mention the millions of disaster debris and billions of pounds of carpet collected.

One agency that is cleaning up is the Sacramento Regional Conservation Corps (SRCC), which services vacated homeless encampments in Yuba City through a CalRecyle grant. Sacramento Regional Conversation Corps also assists in fire fuel reduction, habitat restoration, drought-tolerant landscape installation and other urban projects.

“The cycle for CalRecyle grants is approximately every two years,” said Doug Libby, Yuba City deputy director of Development Services. “Grants are awarded on a point system and include points if a Conservation Corps Team is included in contracts for the work to be done.”

 After the Sacramento Regional Conservation Corps cleaned up the area in Yuba City with the CalRecycle grant. Photo courtesy of Sacramento Regional Conservation Corps

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) emphasizes the need for less plastic volume in land and water to minimize health hazards and the impact of global warming. Additionally, “less contamination in the recycling stream and easier access to recycling opportunities help increase recycling rates,” according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Libby said the CalRecyle grants are critical to Yuba City seeing Sacramento Regional Conversation Corps assistance that “might otherwise not be able to be funded through the normal budget process due to limited resources.”

According to the deputy director, while Sacramento Regional Conversation Corps oversees a specific project, Yuba City code enforcement officials can focus their attention on other needed areas.

“Utilizing the SRCC team to clean up vacated homeless camp locations and the associated debris would consume significant city resources, and without the SRCC team, cleanup would take much longer and be at a higher cost to the city,” Libby said.

The cost of money and the environment are high due to what the Environmental Protection Agency calls “aquatic trash.”

The Environmental Protection Agency’s Trash Free Waters Program focuses on four categories: source reduction, trash capture, research and community engagement. All of these are key to keeping Yuba City clean.

“Having CalRecyle and SRCC as our partners provides Yuba City with the needed resources to more quickly address the environmental impacts of abandoned homeless camps in our community to minimize impacts on our water and land resources,” Libby said.

Working with said state agencies now helps future cleanup and recycling opportunities, according to the deputy director, who said partnerships with CalRecyle and Sacramento Regional Conversation Corps “can sometimes open the doors to additional grant opportunities Yuba City might not have.”

While the Golden State continues to collect trash through CalRecyle, Yuba City will follow suit and utilize all available resources. 

“We believe city residents desire to live in a clean, peaceful community with minimal blight,” Libby said. “These cleanup efforts assist to maintain a better quality of life and aesthetic for everyone in our community.”