In 1970, Berkeley had yet to establish city wide recycling of any materials. Recycling was not a popular practice. Small centers were springing up around the city, led by inspired community groups and ecology organizations.

This poster asks the Berkeley community to donate specific recycling materials at their leisure to Oxford School in North Berkeley—a request that suggests that they were receiving a relatively small amount of material that could be processed by volunteers. In the Ecology Action publication, How to Start a Neighborhood Recycling Center, they suggest not letting people drop off materials because it can pile up and take time to sort and prepare properly. Therefore, one wonders how much material they were receiving and how many volunteers helped to run the school based center.

As an additional call to action, the flyer asks readers to volunteer their time with the center. There is a particular familiarity created with this flyer- the hand drawn graphics, the step by step instructions, the offer for questions with a phone number- which makes the ask for people’s time not unusual. It is like a neighbor asking for a hand.