SUNNYSIDE, Wash. – Yakima Eco Solutions, or YES, held its monthly recycling event at the Sunnyside Community Center, drawing residents despite the rainy weather.
The event offered community members the chance to recycle materials such as cardboard, paper, aluminum, tin, and glass. Miriam Mendoza, the owner and founder of YES, emphasized the local impact of these efforts.
“The cardboard and mixed paper turns into fruit packaging, which is here used locally by the farmers and the producers here. The aluminum and the tin that we recycle goes into new reams of metal that is used here. And same with the glass. The glass is ground down into sand for landscaping. Once again, it’s used here,” Mendoza said.
YES donates all proceeds to the Sunnyside community, creating a beneficial cycle. Mendoza described it as a “win-win situation.”
“We are able to come out here and divert all this material from going into the landfill and we’re giving back to the community on a monetary scale for something that the community really cares about,” she said.
The awareness created by YES has led to a utility tax on the community pool to fully fund it. Mendoza also mentioned plans to support projects at the Sunnyside Senior Center and Community Center.
“We’re here to provide solutions, and that is from an environmental standpoint. We’re not here to create problems. We’re here to find those and create solutions, whether that be from diverting recycling from landfills or finding products like we have here today that also are compostable,” Mendoza said
For those who missed the event, YES hosts recycling events every last Sunday of the month. The next opportunity to participate will be on March 30 at the Sunnyside Community Center.
