COUNTYWIDE : Scout Displays His Stick-To-Itiveness

Eagle Scout candidate Mike Crist has taken on the monumental task of organizing an effort to put more than a thousand stickers on trash containers along Huntington Beach’s city and state beaches.

The stickers urge people to recycle.

“It will help to save the environment for everybody on the planet,” said Crist of Fountain Valley, who is undertaking the project to earn his Eagle Scout badge.

“The message I want to get across is, it’s important to recycle, and if everyone pitches in and throws away their trash, they will be able to live longer because the air is not as polluted as it might be if they didn’t recycle.”

The Los Amigos High School student will launch his “Can It for the Planet Program” Saturday at 2 p.m. on the beach near Beach Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway. The public is invited to attend.

Labels will be applied to more than 1,000 trash cans between Golden West Street and the Santa Ana River.

The stickers reads “Don’t Bury It . . . Don’t Break It . . . Can It!” and are aimed at getting people to recycle beverage containers.

While Crist, a member of Garden Grove Boy Scout Troop 75, has organized eight teams of four people--fellow Scouts and friends--he said he is still in need of volunteers.

“I need as many people as I can get,” he said.

Fountain Valley Councilman George B. Scott, who has been working with Crist, said it is important to educate the public about recycling.

“Mike’s efforts in organizing other Scouts to put out the recycling message will impact millions of beach and park visitors,” Scott said.

Susan Lynn, Fountain Valley’s environmental programs manager, said her department conceived the idea for the stickers. But she said the project is a joint effort by the Environmental Education Committee, made up of representatives from Fountain Valley, Huntington Beach and Rainbow Disposal Co. Inc., the waste hauler for the two cities.

It cost about $1,000 to print the stickers, Lynn said. She said half of the cost is being paid for by a grant from the state Department of Conservation. The two cities will share the remainder of the cost.

Rainbow Disposal will take trash from the beach containers to its central processing plant to recover recyclables. In addition, the disposal company is donating the labor to put the stickers on 72 large trash bins along the beach.

Boy Scout Patrick Gerken, 16, of Fountain Valley is also working on the project to apply the labels to trash containers at Bolsa Chica State Beach. Gerken, who is also doing the project to earn his Eagle Scout badge, said he hopes to place the stickers on containers the first week of August.

Other local Scouts plan to place the stickers on containers at Fountain Valley Recreation and Cultural Center, Lynn said. In all, she said, more than 2,500 containers along the beach and at the recreation facility will have the sticker.