For years area governments and local volunteer groups have spawned dozens of plans to force lakeside residents into conventional models of recycling where trash is separated into color-coded categories.
The programs floundered when homeowners saw nearly all of their carefully sorted items jumbled back into the heap in the bed of the garbage truck.
“There’s a reason the men do that,” said Conrado Contreras Reynoso, co-founder of Scrap Recyclers. There are many types of metal, paper, and glass products. Just a few of those items are easy and cost-effect to recycle so the garbage men are sorting out aluminum cans and the large cardboard boxes. Plus there are seven distinct classifications of plastic. Until recently, they could quickly sell three types of plastic to Recicladora de la Ribera de Chapala (RCC) in Riberas, but it has now closed.
“We started Scrap Recyclers last June, just before RCC opened, and while we operate in a totally different way, the financial concerns that caused them to close keeps us mindful of our own precarious situation,” said Alejandra Lazcano, Contreras’ wife and partner. “We need more users to make enough to pay the rent on our collection space, our employee’s wages and gas for the truck so we can pick up the user’s items. So far we make enough some months to do that. Other months we draw on what I make as a fitness instructor. While Conrado works full time on Scrap Recylers, he is an electrical engineer and the head of DIELEP, an electrical business.”
The system Contreras and Lazcano developed for Scrap Recyclers is convenient and exceedingly simple. During the week, users put all clean plastic, paper, cardboard, glass and metal items into the same bag. When Contreras and his assistant, Chuy, pick up the accumulated items once a week, they leave a new bag for the next assortment of items.
“We can take and find someone to recycle almost everything,” explained Contreras. “We’ll pick up old computer and electronic equipment, and small household appliances. Most recyclers only want big cardboard boxes, but we can recycle all kinds of paper from grocery store receipts to toothpaste boxes to the box the refrigerator was delivered in. Everyone is selling aluminum and copper, but it’s hard to find someone to take and recycle soup cans. We’ll take them, but please rinse them first. And we can take aerosol cans, too.”
The list of items Scrap Recyclers gather, sort, accumulate, and then sell to larger processors just goes on and on. Of course plastic milk cartons and water, shampoo and soda bottles create a lot of the bulk, but there are other plastic items: containers from the laundry and cleaning products, broken plastic glasses, Styrofoam, plastic plant pots and the dozens of plastic bags it all comes home in.
It is actually easier to describe the few items Scrap Recyclers doesn’t pick up. They can’t take sanitary refuse, hazardous chemicals, including old cans of paint, medications, food scraps, or garden clippings (yet).
“The other thing we can’t take right now are all of those tetra boxes from juices, tomato puree, milk and other liquids. We’ve tried to sell them, but right now the only plant that is recycling them is in Durango. We can’t sell a load for enough to pay for the expense to get it there,” added Lazcano.
“It’s hard to imagine, but the municipality of Chapala hauls 60 tons of trash to the landfill every day, six days a week,” said Contreras. “Most people are fully aware of the problems of putting plastic and other materials into the earth; they don’t stop to think that the government pays over 100,000 pesos a week in landfill fees every week. We talked to ecology chief Moctezuma Medina Corona and showed him how we can save the government money by taking a fraction of the items they put in the landfill. “
Those costs to the planet and to the taxpayers aren’t the only reasons Contreras, and his wife, Alejandra Lazcano, were searching for a recycling solution. “Ajijic is my home, and Conrad is from Chapala, “ said Lazcano. “When I came back after living in the United States I was shocked by the litter and the mounds of garbage waiting to be picked up. I’d learned to recycle up there. I knew it didn’t have to be like this and that we needed to do something here. “
“We hope people will start thinking about and using our service in a lot of different ways,” said Contreras. “We don’t just pick up at individual homes. We pick up four or five times a week from local restaurants and bars and other local businesses with large volume. We’ve recently added some of the nursing homes. As the news is spreading we’re starting to pick up for some of the gated communities. All of the homes in Vista Alegre are participating now. Our service is especially good for those areas where there is no governmental pick up and homeowners have to pay to have the garbage hauled. We take all of the bulk and leave only the sanitary and kitchen garbage for them to handle.”
The enterprising couple has met some resistance from residents who wonder if they are taking away the livelihood of the garbage men or the people who glean aluminum cans from the streets and city trash barrels. The couple has a firm rule: Scrap Recyclers only gathers materials from their own users.
“We never, ever pick up anything from the street,” said Contreras. He grinned and said, “Sometimes I’m tempted when I walk right by a bucket of cans or see a big pile of packing boxes sitting on the sidewalk where the homeowner has put them for the truck, but I drive on by.
“We’ve also learned that the items we’ve collected aren’t necessarily safe. Now one of us keeps the load in sight, all of the time. One time when we came back from neighboring houses all of the bags in the back of the truck were ripped open, the aluminum cans were gone and a lot of our recyclables were all over the street. Someone was stealing our trash!”
Scrap Recyclers picks up recyclable materials from users from El Limon, the Racquet Club and San Juan Cosalá all the way to Santa Cruz and San Nicolás and Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos on the east and north of Chapala.
Getting a regular pickup day and time is easy to start with Scrap Recyclers. Potential users can email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with name, address and phone number or post a similar private message on the Scrap Recycler’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/scrap.recyclers or call Lazcano’s cellular: 33-1537-8437 and give her the information. Users can also call Alex to make arrangements to drop items off at the company’s new storage area in San Antonio Tlayacapan.