Photo Credit: Ecology Center

Looking for your local Environmental Resource Center, EcoLibrary or environmental education programs? How about an epicenter for your local recycling programs, farmers markets, and a store that features the full spectrum of green books and household products?

Berkeley’s Ecology Center encompasses all of this and more by implementing programs that educate, demonstrate and engage with the public in the latest green community services.

Started as a volunteer-run meeting place for the founders of first wave 60’s environmentalism, the Ecology Center has become an epicenter for many of Berkeley’s programs that have become so fundamental to the Bay Area’s cultural and environmental impact.

Among the diverse programs implemented by the Ecology Center, the Curbside Recycling Program has perhaps had the most influence nationwide. Beginning as a demonstration project to collect newspapers, it grew to become the first curbside recycling program in California, and is one of the only nonprofits of this sort still alive today. Additionally, based on the EC’s research, this program has “served as a model for thousands of municipal recycling programs.”

For those of you interested in Bay Area green projects, check out Terrain, the Ecology Center’s free quarterly magazine focusing on “a broad spectrum of issues ranging from wilderness protection to urban toxics and environmental justice.”

Also, feel free to look into any of their sponsored projects, including: the Bay Area Seed Interchange Library, Berkeley Biodiesel Collective, Berkeley Community Gardening Collaborative, and the Indigenous Permaculture Project. And the list of programs just keeps growing…
See all of these and more at http://www.ecologycenter.org/