On a recent Friday morning in Chico, Mario Morales and Geri Fredricksen hauled a black plastic bag filled with aluminum cans and glass bottles toward Fair Street. It wasn’t a bad morning for business as far as Morales was concerned.
Most days for the past two years, side-by-side, Morales and Fredricksen rummaged through bin after bin searching for recyclables to exchange for a meager sum at Fair Street Recycling. On good days, Morales said, they could get upwards of $50 — but on this particular day, he estimated that their haul would get about $30. He was especially glad that the students had returned from spring break.
For most of the two-mile walk from Downtown to Fair Street, Fredricksen carried the nearly 20 lb. bag — they switched every so often but Morales’s bad knee made it difficult. He says, at one point, he was on his way to become a professional tennis player. It was an injury to Morales’s knee that began his journey from tennis courts to the alleys on Ivy Street.
“It is painful especially after coming as far as I went professionally in tennis — to come down to this — it's pretty low. It bugs me.”
Morales said that he never once imagined that his life would turn to this. He said that they started picking through garbage cans for a simple reason:
"We didn't really have a choice. If you're stuck and there’s no jobs out, you’ve got to do something — you got to come up with something. And so, it’s the best thing we could do. That's the way it goes. It's a rough life."
Morales and Fredricksen say that they rely on a network to survive. Programs and services provided by community groups like the Jesus Center and the Shalom Free Clinic help them get by. In addition, they have a close group of friends who would help with food and shelter if they ever needed it. But to make ends meet, they still have to make their trek around Chico, collecting the cans and bottles people leave behind.
It works. But there’s a problem.
“Essentially it’s against the municipal code for a regular citizen to go into a contracted recyclable container and take the contents from it.”
That’s Sgt. Scott Zuschin, an 11-year veteran of the Chico Police Department.
“I think that a variety of people use recyclables to add funding to their lifestyle. Especially during the time we didn't have a lot of jobs available; the housing market crash and everything else, you started seeing a lot more recyclable thefts.”
Sgt. Zuschin says it was the economic downturn that began and will perpetuate the commonplace nature of recyclable theft. He also cites a lack of resources to properly enforce the law.
“But it’s a careful balance. With limited police officers in the street we have to really prioritize carefully to maintain the balance of service to the community that's effective and having enough officers to respond to emergency calls. So it’s a delicate balance.”
Zuschin fears that an inability to enforce the law and to even make people aware it is a crime makes it difficult to solve this problem. The sergeant also fears that these smaller crimes may open up doors for larger crimes.
“Because it’s OK to do that because I'm not going to get caught. But what if I do this? And then it just gets worse and worse.”
The sergeant says that unless more people become aware of the laws and report on them, it will be difficult for police officers to do anything about it. As for Mario Morales and Geri Fredricksen, they too hope that they won’t be rummaging through recycling bins much longer.
"And thank god we've been together for long enough to sit there and deal with it. And we're going to get out of it.”