Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.
Recyclepalooza enables the reuse of items through recycling. And it reduces what goes into landfills. Residents say Recyclepalooza in Flossmoor is a much appreciated event.
Jerry Kenny came to the 2025 Recyclepalooza with clothes and toys. He sets his personal items aside in the garage knowing he can drop them at Recyclepalooza.
Erica Cheung has used Recyclepalooza the past five years. This year she brought electronics, toys, Legos, trophies. Like Kenny, she too stores up items she intends to recycle.
“I really appreciate this event,” Cheung said.
In the first 30 minutes, 92 cars passed through the Reyclepalooza event.
“It was incredible,” said Stephanie Wright, the village’s community engagement manager, of the four-hour event Saturday, Sept. 27. This annual recycling initiative has donors drive through Parker Junior High’s parking lot and be serviced by volunteers who take their items for recycling.
Carrie Malfeo, a member of the Chicago Southland Green Committee, said Recyclepalooza is at least a decade old. When she first proposed it, she thought it would be a long-term event.
“We were planning for an annual event because we didn’t foresee an easy way for people to re-home or properly recycle ‘hard to recycle’ materials. The one-stop shop event really helps,” Malfeo said.
Eric Turnquest, a member of the village’s Green Commission, watched as the TVs and other electronics started to fill a truck from the CHaRM Center in cooperation with the Helping Hands organization.
“It’s always electronic waste that’s the big one,” he said, pointing out how much electronics are part of our everyday life. “There’s always that waste stream.”
Volunteers took just about everything that was in the backs of cars. Paints weren’t accepted, but Wright said that could change in the future.
The CHaRM Center is the South Suburban College Center for Hard to Recycle Materials. It opened two years ago as a project of Cook County. The CHaRM Center’s truck was filling up with electronics and small household appliances, textiles and styrofoam.
CHaRM’s involvement “is a tremendous benefit to us because they take the styrofoam which in years past it fluctuated” between accepting and rejecting the product said Hilary Barker, a member of the Flossmoor Green Commission and a Recyclepalooza volunteer the past six or seven years. Now knowing that the CHaRM center will take styrofoam has been “really great.”
Working Bikes, a nonprofit from Chicago, came to accept cast off bikes that will be refurbished and given away locally or shipped overseas to nonprofit organizations who organize give-aways.
Pitching in at this Recyclepalooza were the Flossmoor Green Commission volunteers, students from Homewood-Flossmoor High School’s Key Club and National Honor Society, and Parker Junior High’s National Junior Honor Society and Green Committee.
The Village of Homewood hosted a shredding event Saturday, Sept 27.
