I recently took my plastic bottles, my glass bottles, and my aluminum cans to the recycler only to find that June 30 was their last day of business.\u00a0With Prince Recycling Center closing, I know that my recycling efforts will be changing \u2013 drastically.\u00a0In spite of being a strong environmentalist, I doubt if I will be as diligent about saving the recyclables if I do not have an outlet to turn them in.\u00a0
\nI heard that the homeless were causing a problem at the recycling center and that is why it was closed.\u00a0I tried to find incidents of crime attributed to these people, and was not successful.\u00a0Homelessness is a problem all over San Diego; it doesn\u2019t matter if there is a recycling center nearby or not.\u00a0
\nI also saw a the suggestion made to the community that they would stop shopping at the local market \u2013 Stumps \u2013 until the center was gone.\u00a0That only made me shop at Stumps more, and I never had any encounter with a homeless person.\u00a0Yes, they were there; taking the money that they had received from helping to clean up the environment to purchase food.\u00a0I was also at Ralphs last week where I saw a homeless person shoplift some food and the manager of the store called the police.\u00a0Shoplifting is not indigenous to Stumps.
\nThe people of California passed the “Bottle Bill \u2013 No. 2020” in 1986.\u00a0It states that if you charge people for “convenience items” you must provide a “convenient” place to take those items back.\u00a0Hence the development of recycling centers.\u00a0(Do you remember taking bottles back to the supermarket to get some change to spend on other goodies?\u00a0I do.)
\nWhile I was in line today, there were seven people ahead of me. Not one of these people was homeless.\u00a0We all talked to each other and lamented the fact that the nearest recycling center is over by San Diego State College.\u00a0We talked about how much we would spend on gas to take our recycles there and how little we would be receiving in return.
\nWe brought “Matt” into our conversation.\u00a0He has worked at the center for two years. I asked him what was going to happen to him after tomorrow, and he said, “I imagine I will have to look for a job.”\u00a0
\n\u00a0I called Mr. Prince and talked to him. I asked him what would happen to Matt, and he told me that not only would Matt lose his job, eight others would also be laid off.\u00a0He told me that he pays them a decent, living wage, a few dollars more than minimum. We have now added nine other people to the homeless group that the neighbors were so set against.
\nPrince told me that he was a native of the Point Loma area.\u00a0His parents, daughter, and siblings live in the area.\u00a0He said that he is in 100 percent compliance with the city and state laws.\u00a0For the most part, the area if relatively clean; he doesn\u2019t allow shopping carts, and his main clientele is not the homeless, but members of the community.\u00a0He told me that he had offered to pay for a full-time security person during the day, but it was not accepted.
\n\u00a0This is my own personal opinion but I think the closing of the center is a great loss to conservation.\u00a0The “convenience zone” that the center had established has helped keep the environment cleaner and has aided in fund-raisers for non-profit organizations; it acted as a method of\u00a0\u00a0receiving “pay-back” for being a good citizen.\u00a0
\nOcean Beach\/Point Loma needs a place to recycle their items.\u00a0I, for one, hope that Prince is allowed to bring back his recycling center to the area.\u00a0The homeless is not a “recycling” problem; the homeless is a “homeless” problem.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I recently took my plastic bottles, my glass bottles, and my aluminum cans to the recycler only to find that June 30 was their last day of business.\u00a0With Prince Recycling Center closing, I know that my recycling efforts will be changing \u2013 drastically.\u00a0In spite of being a strong environmentalist, I doubt if I will be […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":271850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"Amid community pressure, Prince Recycling Center on Voltaire Street closes","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11561],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-271849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-peninsula-beacon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}