Decades ago, lifestyles were slower and it was common practice to preserve and reuse. But times changed and the world became faster and richer.

Today, homeowners routinely mow their lawns and toss the clippings in the trash. Milk comes in paper cartons or plastic jugs, and plastic bags are standard carriers.

We have evolved into a throwaway society that pays little attention to reusing materials. And the result is too much waste being blamed for the depletion of the ozone layer, endangering wildlife and overflowing landfills.

Various countries have tried to answer this challenge. The United States' federal government created departments and agencies to address environmental concerns, and state environmental agencies soon followed.

California challenged its cities to be more environmentally minded, and San Jose gained attention by becoming one of the most "green" cities in the nation.

In Willow Glen citizens don't have to look further than Lincoln Avenue, just south of Highway 280, where Saulman Valani is helping to maintain the idea that no matter how far or fast civilization progresses, recycling is the key to prosperity that farmers and ranchers enjoyed years ago.

The 29-year-old is a third-generation recycling businessman who runs the Ranch Town Recycling Center. The Valanis have been recycling since before World War II, he says. His grandfather started Valani Metals in Bombay, India, in 1935. Valani's father took over the family business in 1965, until the family immigrated to the Unied States in 1990.

In 1996 the Valanis started a business in what they knew best and purchased Ranch Town, a former roofing company.

The Valanis turned it into a recycling business—collecting cans, glass, brass and other recycling items through their buyback center.

"In India, everybody recycles everything," Saulman Valani says. "More so than in America, but we think that's changing."

In India, recycling isn't just a politically correct trend, it's a necessity. The country shares similar environmental problems with the United States—air pollution caused from industrial facilities and water pollution from pesticides.

Understanding the importance of being green , Valani says Ranch Town works at helping the community become proactive about recycling, which is economically and environmentally smart.

Ranch Town caters to residents and businesses, Valani says. Residents from as far away as the Santa Cruz mountains bring their glass and plastic bottles and aluminum cans to Ranch Town to receive the California redemption value. Businesses often will drop off their scrap metal, which Valani gladly accepts.

Valani says he wants Ranch Town to help educate the public about the importance of recycling in addition to being a buyback business.

He says that children's groups, including Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, come to Ranch Town to learn more about the importance of recycling.

To help make Ranch Town more inviting and seem less like a chore for children and families, Valani has made the center look somewhat like a real ranch.

Life-sized wood placards of farm animals share space near the center's entrance with rusted and dented turn-of-the-century antiques such as a wagon wheel, a water pump and a washing machine. A pair of old gas station pumps completes the rustic ambiance.

Recycling, however, isn't child's play. Valani says he's seen parents and grandparents bring their recyclables to his buyback center rather than place them in bins on the curb for the city to pick up.

"They want to teach their children to learn the importance of saving money," Valani says. "They'll bring in their bottles and cans and redeem them for money that goes toward something big, like college tuition, or smaller, like a rainy-day fund."

Because of the slow economy, fewer businesses are bringing in their scrap metal. Nevertheless, Valani says that Ranch Town is still doing well. What will keep the center going won't be reliance on metal, he says, but on plastic.

"Plastic is the future," Valani says. "Plastic bottles are being recycled as fiber for clothing now."

He's noticed that more and more customers are bringing in plastic water bottles than glass bottles or aluminum cans.

"I've even seen people bring in plastic beer bottles," Valani says.

Ranch Town is also considering a possible expansion of its operations to accept paper and cardboard, but that may not be for another year or so, Valani says.

Farther south on Lincoln Avenue at the Willow Glen Coffee Roasting Company, storeowner Chris Carris sees recycling as both practical and environmentally convenient. It doesn't take much effort to do it right, he says. Carris trains his staff to rinse out recycling items before placing them in the designated receptacles.

With as much waste as a coffee shop can produce, Carris takes pride that most of his shop's waste will be used for practical uses rather than going to a landfill.

While bottles and cans go to recycling, he isolates some trash to take to his one-acre orchard in Campbell to be used as mulch and compost. Carris' family were formerly ranchers.

"Paper napkins, newspapers, stuff like that would always be saved and burned and used as mulch," Carris says. "What came from the soil would go back into the soil."

Carris is one of those Santa Clara County residents who's recycled all his life and can't remember a time when recycling wasn't an important part of living prosperously.

"Some people think it always took a city commission or department to handle trash," he says, "but ranchers and farmers have always had the wherewithal to reuse their trash."

As a coffee merchant, Carris says his shop produces between 40 and 80 pounds of coffee grounds a day, but hardly any of it gets thrown out. He not only saves some of it for his orchard, but gives some to his friends and customers for their gardens.

Yet not every Willow Glen business has that flexibility. The Almaden Cinema in the Willow Glen Plaza can't recycle the trash it produces, but it does take steps to lessen the amount.

To cut down on costs and waste, the theater gave up on popcorn tubs and started serving popcorn in bags.

"It's less material but carries the same amount of popcorn," says Paul Gunsky, owner of the CineLux Theatres, which owns the Almaden Cinema.

For Gunsky, the change was economical rather than environmental, but the decision was also environmentally sound.

"It just makes sense," Gunsky says. "We pay less for less trash."

Every business in the shopping center is responsible for paying for trash collection, Gunsky says.

"Overall trash has gone down since we converted to popcorn bags," he notes. "Most of our trash is wet trash and the bags can't be recycled, and that's rather unfortunate."

On a larger scale, Enviro Waste Systems on Meridian Avenue helps businesses reduce their waste with the help of giant compactors.

The company imports the parts, which are then constructed into large, mechanized, long-arm compactors. These compactors are sold to a range of businesses, from telecommunication companies to car manufacturers.

The company's owner declined to comment, but one manager said the company's compactors help lower a customer's costs by compacting waste, trash and recyclables. The compacted waste can be discarded more cheaply and takes up less space if sent to a landfill.

This reduction also helps meet the state's criteria. In 1994 the state passed regulations requiring cities to divert up to 50 percent of their waste from landfills.

The state's Integrated Waste Management Board worked to help cities meet those goals. After a slow start, San Jose met the 50-percent-diversion rate in 1999. The city kept up the momentum and now diverts up to 64 percent of its solid waste from landfills.

"We couldn't have met those goals without the cooperation of the city's residents," says Patricia Baggese, the commercial solid waste manager for the city's environmental services department.

She attributes the city's success to the residents' acceptance of the "Pay As You Throw" collection program.

Generally accepted nationwide in large cities, the Pay As You Throw program charges residents with standardized collection fees that depend on the size of collection carts they place on their curb.

In San Jose, collection carts range in size from 20 gallons to 96 gallons. After a rate hike last July, a 32-gallon cart now costs $16.80 a month for garbage collection.

Even with a recent rate hike, San Jose still maintains the lowest collection rates in the county, and Baggese said San Jose is looked upon as a recycling leader nationwide.

"Oh, I'll pay it, definitely," says Willow Glen resident Leslie Torrance, who believes the city isn't asking too much for collection services.

"If it keeps the environment clean, it'll be worth it," she says.

The former Boston resident says she appreciates how easy the city makes it to recycle, and appreciates that the city takes everything away. The extra effort the city takes to make recycling easy is one reason Torrance—a lifelong recycler—prefers living in San Jose.

The mother of two says it's also important that her children understand the value of recycling. Her family even separates recyclable materials into different trash bags on camping trips.

Ruth Hennigar also appreciates the city's efforts to make recycling easy for residents.

"It's practically hard not to recycle," she says.

Hennigar, also from the East Coast, says she doesn't mind the slightly higher collection fees here in San Jose and that the service is more efficient than what she experienced living in her New York apartment.

"It was pretty restrictive," she says. "There was only a small amount you could put out each week, and at times it could get really frustrating when you had to get rid of more than was allowed."

She is glad, however, that there are large bins behind her workplace, which goes through many glass bottles each month.

Hennigar works at The Grapevine, a wine specialty shop on Lincoln Avenue, which hosts several wine tastings during the week.

"We go through more glass bottles than you can imagine," she says, estimating the shop recycles between 250 and 300 wine bottles a month from the wine tastings alone.

Today citizens like Hennigar recognize the importance of reusing products; she says she would have a hard time working for a business that went through that much glass without recycling it.

Others like Torrance say it would be difficult living in a city that didn't have a recycling service.

"I get so frustrated with other cities that don't have recycling collection services," she says.