It seems appropriate in this year of EcoCycle’s Silver Anniversary that our staff was recently interviewed for an upcoming book on the History of Recycling in America — including a request for pictures of the famous yellow school buses used for the first collections. Even more synchronistic is the fact that the new Boulder County Recycling Center (BCRC) is scheduled to officially start up on the exact date (July 1st) twenty-five years to the day that EcoCycle was officially incorporated.

The story of recycling and EcoCycle is a local tale involving thousands of participants who have shared in the blood, sweat and tears of birthing an idea into a revolution. Children growing up in Boulder have never known a world, or school, without EcoCycle. We’ve introduced the community to resource conservation through recycling and to environmental activism through political actions at City Hall. We are truly a socially-responsible business, donating 100% of any surplus we make back into fulfilling our mission of “transforming the throw-away society.”

The stories behind the scenes at EcoCycle are legendary, but the most amazing ones will never see ink on paper. From the first driving visions of Pete Grogan, Roy Young, and the early Board members to the present visions of the current Board and staff, we have kept our passion alive. We are you, and you are EcoCycle, and as a true community organization, we start every morning with your child’s future world on our agenda.

The next 25 years must move us all beyond recycling and into a society where waste and toxicity reduction is the first order of business, and where every product or package is designed to be recycled, composted or re-used at the end of its life. Doubtless, regulation and new laws will be required to get industry to change their ways. Your local City Hall is where that struggle will begin because it is your groundwater, air and bodies that are being poisoned under the current system. EcoCycle will keep leading the charge for change, and we invite you all to once again hop on the EcoCycle Bus as we journey upstream — this time to the headwaters of the “waste” problem: bad industrial design and a culture of hyper-consumerism. We will be pushing for better design that minimizes resource use and toxicity, and for a system that promotes producer responsibility for the entire life cycle of a product. The next 25 years at EcoCycle are well underway, and it looks to be every bit as exciting, challenging and successful as anything we’ve done in the first 25.