Every year Recology gives this festival its waste, recycling and organics bins. No invoice, no negotiation, just the bins turning up. It is the least glamorous donation the Zombie Bike Parade receives and one of the most useful.
Here is why it matters more than it sounds. A festival that fills Community Park with a few thousand people has to deal with what those people leave behind, and bin hire for an event this size is not a rounding error. Every year Recology covers it is a year that money does not come out of the festival. And because this festival gives its net proceeds to NorCal Trykers, money that does not go on bins goes on trikes instead. A custom adaptive trike costs about $1,000. The bins are a real part of how we get there.
Why they fit here
Recology is a zero waste company, and they mean something specific by it: find a use for material rather than bury it, and only landfill what nothing can yet be done with. That is a company whose whole argument is that the throwaway option is the lazy one.
Which is a reasonable description of a bike parade, too. Davis is a platinum-rated bicycle friendly town that decided the answer to getting around was the simplest, lightest thing available. A festival built on bicycles and a company built on not throwing things away are making the same argument from different directions.
There is a second thing they have in common, and it is less obvious. Recology has been 100 percent employee owned since 1986, one of the largest employee-owned companies in its industry, with roots going back to the scavenger companies of early 1900s San Francisco. It is a business owned by the people who do the work. This festival is put on by the people who show up to it. Neither of us has shareholders to answer to, which turns out to change what you are willing to do for your own town.
So: thank you to Recology, and to Jamie Ford, who makes it happen on our end. If you see their bins at Community Park on Halloween, use them. That is the whole ask.
