“Any time we can reuse or recycle, it means our landfills aren’t filling up as fast, so it’s being a responsible citizen, and being good stewards of the earth,” Schmidt said.

Schmidt has been volunteering since 1995 and said the countless volunteers are what make the project possible.

“We’ve got the support of East Lansing, the city of East Lansing and many of the businesses that come and help us recycle some of the items, but without volunteers we couldn’t do this,” she said.

Mike Foster, a seventh-year volunteer and East Lansing High School Junior Varsity football coach, annually brings his team out to volunteer and said the event helps build athletes’ character and sense of community involvement.

“Sometimes high school athletes are not aware that things like this occur,” he said. “It’s nice to get them out in the middle of the community and working, and they just see from a different disposition.”

East Lansing High School sophomore and football player Miguel Colunga said he liked helping out at Project Pride and will continue to volunteer in coming years.

“What I like about it is you get the good feeling that you’re helping,” he said. “You feel like you’re contributing something to the community.”

East Lansing City Councilmember Kevin Beard, who has been volunteering at Project Pride for eight years, said he understands the project is much bigger than helping the community.

“All the stuff we’re capturing, we’re recycling,” he said. “Scrap metal and scrap lumber, rather than sitting in the dump and rusting away, gets to be used for any number of purposes.”

In 2010, Project Pride has expanded to accept paper documents for paper shredding, all seven different types of plastics to recycle, and will continue to expand annually, Beard said.

“Every year we do something a little more — a little better — to get more things out of the waste stream,” he said.

Volunteer and East Lansing resident Morgan Swan said the event brings the residents together to take responsibility for pollution and help the environment in more ways than one.

“Whether it’s scrap metal that can be melted back down, wood that can be chipped or recycled into something else, there is so much garbage that can be put to another use,”
she said.