Leadership Morgan Hill, local artists, unveil new recycling
containers
The 23 members of Morgan Hill’s Leadership Morgan Hill class proudly displayed the fruit of their year-long labors Wednesday – unveiling 15 new recycling containers downtown and urging local residents to “Drop It Right.”
The containers are part of the “Recycle the Recycables” project of this year’s Leadership Morgan Hill class.
The group gathered with city officials, business people and members of the community at Caffee Kaffee Vin, and later, Gallery Morgan Hill on Wednesday evening to give the public a short tour of the new containers downtown and recognize artwork created by local artists to decorate the containers.
As they each dropped bottles into the new recycling containers, Mayor Dennis Kennedy and Program Administrator Tony Eulo each spoke to the crowd.
Kennedy thanked the Leadership group for their hard work on the project and noted, the recycling containers are a good contribution to Morgan Hill.
Eulo agreed, stating, “(The containers) send a right message to downtown Morgan Hill.”
Along the tour, other individuals used the containers and spoke about Leadership’s contribution to downtown recycling. They included Dan Craig, executive director of the Morgan Hill Downtown Association; Don Jensen, chairman of the Design Committee of the Morgan Hill Downtown Association; Dan Ehrler and Deborah Rogers, executive director and membership relations director, respectively, of the Morgan Hill Chamber of Commerce; Dr. Michael Lacerda, chiropractor; and Mary Gerbic, a paralegal with Thomas Kinkade.
The goal of the program is “to make people more aware about recycling and recycling the right way,” according to members of the 2005 Leadership Morgan Hill class.
David Cohen of Leadership Morgan Hill told the City Council last Wednesday night that recyclable materials become contaminated when they are mixed together and in order to prevent this from happening, the 2005 Leadership Class thought it would be a worthwhile project to introduce the “Drop It Right” campaign to the community and the schools, to teach the facts of recycling and the need to separate recycables.
In early August, Cohen said, the class picked up 15 recyclable containers and took them to Anaerobe Systems, where they cleaned, chemically stripped and repainted the containers. They redesigned the lids by putting holes for cans and bottles and clearly marked the recycling containers for these recyclables only.
To draw attention to the project and make it more interesting, the class held a competition among local artists and selected five designs which were then reprinted on the new containers.
After the tour, the selected artwork was then recognized at a wine and cheese party at Gallery Morgan Hill. Five of 15 entries were selected and displayed on the recyclable containers: Tom King, whose work depicts Morgan Hill downtown looking on to the future towards a clean horizon; Kayla Cromer, two children with balloons encouraging recycling; Satu Viitanen, El Toro Hill with transparent bottles showing a green landscape of Morgan Hill; Mary Hiller, a stone structure welcoming visitors to Morgan Hill with a recycle message; and Angie Young, El Toro and a happy cow recycling with a little help from her bird friends.
Eleven-year-old Morgan Hill resident Kayla Cromer’s design, chosen for the children’s category, summarized Leadership’s intent to educate the public on proper recycling. “Kids Learn By What They See,” her piece reads.
“We learn by example, it just seemed like a good theme for me to work on,” Cromer said.
Rose Meily covers City Hall for the Morgan Hill Times. Reach her at rm****@mo*************.com or at 779-4106 ext. 201.
