C.A.R.E. History

CENTRAL AREA RECYCLING EXCHANGE

History

In 1983, the Eastern Nebraska Community Office of Retardation applied for and received a grant from the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality. The purpose of the grant was to start a program to train persons attending ENCOR’s Central Area Training Center. The community would benefit in two ways:

The recycling of all types of paper and aluminum cans conserves valuable landfill space.
The job of crushing the aluminum cans combined with sorting and weighing the paper, provides work training for the persons served by ENCOR.

	The name CARE, is an acronym for Central Area Recycling Exchange.
	The idea proved to be a very good one.
	The donation of the recyclable materials enabled the program to grow rapidly. It grew so fast, that the administrators of the training center began looking for additional space to handle the increasing volume of recyclables. It just so happened that the City of Omaha was looking for a contractor to sort the newspapers that were collected curbside from residences throughout the city.

In 1985, the City of Omaha and ENCOR entered into a cooperative agreement to recycle the newsprint. The city provided space at it’s Solid Waste Recycling Center for ENCOR to operate the program.

For two years recycling increased and the community’s participation and awareness of recycling was instrumental in CARE’s growth.

The city was increasing it’s recycling goals. At the same time, ENCOR was concentrating on recycling office and computer paper. The agreement with the city ended, and the new CARE program officially began with ENCOR opening its own recycling center at 1110 No. 45th Street.

Businesses and organizations throughout the greater Omaha area were recruited to participate in recycling by donating their office, computer paper and aluminum cans to CARE.

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