It is easy being green
Web site takes hazardous waste disposal to the VCMAX
By Ailene Sankur 11/01/2007
When Pandee Leachman’s mother suffered a stroke a few years ago, she needed to be moved immediately to a facility. Leachman was overwhelmed by the sheer amount and diversity of the stuff she had to clean out of her mother’s house in a few short days. As a Ventura County Public Works Employee, she had worked with CalMAX, a statewide materials exchange program to reduce landfill disposal. CalMAX provided a Web site similar to Craigslist for sale, barter and free items links, but what it didn’t provide was options for getting rid of hazardous materials like pesticides and an easy guide on donating most everything else to charitable organizations.
Leachman recognized that there was a need to expand the CalMax Web site’s basic material exchange listings into a one-stop source to advertise unwanted items for sale or trade, find charities like RAINN and Habitat for Humanity to donate to and one that would provide information from the county’s Integrated Waste Management division about hazardous waste collection.
With that epiphany, the Ventura County Materials Exchange (VCMAX) Web site, www.vcmax.org, was launched.
“People don’t know their options,” Leachman said. “For instance, they can donate their building materials to Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore, a thrift store specially for building materials. That way they can save themselves dumping costs, not to mention those donations are tax deductible. If you go on the VCMAX Web site, you can easily find a link to their Web site.
“Let’s say your family decides to clean out the garage,” she said. “There’s a ton of stuff in there you don’t use anymore, not to mention it’s creating a fire hazard. First, you need to get rid of the garage refrigerator. Look on the Web site’s sidebar and click on Appliance Reuse and Recycling. We list appliance removal services and information on whether pickup is free or where your refrigerator is going.”
There are quite a few options. One click on refrigerator removal yields 16 services, each for a unique situation. The Salvation Army and other thrift stores will pick up a working refrigerator. Major Appliance Recycling Service will charge you $15 to pick up a nonworking refrigerator, while Oxnard Scrap Metal won’t pick it up, but will pay you for the scrap metal.
“Then you have half-empty paint cans and pesticides,” Leachman said. “You can’t throw that stuff away, but if you look on our Web site there’s a link to Hazardous Waste Disposal with information on how to donate recycled paint to nonprofits or what Ventura County resources are there for pesticide-disposal.
“So then you come upon a pile of tools,” she said. Tools can be sold or given away on the site, or items can be sought out on a wanted page. “Tools go in a second,” Leachman said.
But VCMAX doesn’t just offer options for hardware and appliances. It also links to thrift and consignment stores so users can find out how to donate clothes and old toys to various nonprofits. It even offers information about pickup options.
Leachman admits that a lack of visitors shrouds VCMAX’s future in mystery. The county hasn’t been advertising the site, and it’s not ingrained in the social consciousness like Craigslist is.
“It’s a hard site to promote,” she said, “but once people go onto the site and play around, they’ll see how easy, and how comprehensive, it is.” Leachman claims to personally monitor everything people post onto the site, ensuring that all transactions are safe.
“There’s no one monitoring Craigslist — you click on a link and up comes some pornography,” she said. “Then there was the recent Craigslist murder [a woman responding to a nanny job was never seen again]. You don’t know what you’re getting on there.”
In the end, knowledge is what Leachman wants to leave the community with.
“People want to do the right thing,” she said. “They just don’t know how.”DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT