Arthur Robinson Boone III

Arthur Robinson Boone III passed away peacefully on October 14, 2024, at 86 years old.
Arthur was born in Yonkers, NY on March 17, 1938. His mother wanted him to be called Robin and he was. He graduated from Gorton High School, with the center of his life being Boy Scouts and his church. He then went to Princeton University where he graduated cum laude in 1960. He stayed a year at Brown in an English Ph.D program and left with an M.A. After a year teaching at Virginia Union University in Richmond, VA, he enrolled at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He graduated in 1965, became an Episcopal minister, and married his first wife. Robin worked and lived in Rutland, VT for 7 years, where his first daughter Ella was born.
Following the dissolution of his first marriage, he made a career change and for ten years worked in equal employment opportunity, first as the staff director of the State of Rhode Island's Commission for Human Rights. While living in RI, he looked up a woman he had met while working in Williamsburg, VA - Mary Catherine Haug - who had moved to Berkeley, California. They started a cross-country courtship and were married in 1975 in Williamsburg, then Robin moved west to make a fresh start with his new wife.
He started Fair Employment Research to continue as an independent consultant and trainer in EEO while purchasing a home in Rockridge / Oakland, and welcoming son William (1977) and daughter Isabelle (1980). In 1983, he started a small neighborhood recycling center on Telegraph Avenue in North Oakland (before curbside recycling!), and welcomed his youngest daughter Phoebe in 1984. He worked hard to keep the recycling center going, but in 1989 he realized the industry was changing and he needed to once again change direction in his life.
Arthur blazed his own trail over and over again, usually as his own boss and with recycling in mind. He started his own recycling consulting company - Total Recycling which he operated for over 20 years. He joined the board of the Northern California Recycling Association (NCRA) in 1987 - and served on it for over 30 years, with 4 years as President. He was the designer of NCRA's Introduction to Recycling class, which he taught from 1995 to 2016, supporting the development of hundreds of young professionals in the field. He also instituted and produced NCRA's recycling update from 1996-2016.
In 1990, Arthur was chair of the City of Oakland's Waste Reduction and Recycling Commission and in the mid-1990s, he was the operator of the first West Coast mattress dismantling and salvage operation, which he sold to the State of California and ran with inmate labor at Folsom Prison for some time.
His children remember some odd jobs to pay the bills - working as a security guard, at Oliver Rubber Co. (his hands always stained black by the rubber), and on the road for the EPA to assess underground gas storage tank removal on Native American Reservations around the southwest (traveling in his own RV!).
In 2009, when he learned that the City of Oakland had cut the budget to plant new trees in the city, Arthur worked with a member of the City Council and the local chapter of the Sierra Club to start Oakland's "volunteer tree planting department", the Sierra Club Tree Team. This passion project grew and expanded into what is now Trees for Oakland - a volunteer organization that has planted more than 1,200 trees over the last 10 years. Even as he slowed down, he could still be found puttering around town in his beat-up truck watering street trees, even as his attention shifted towards his other passion: paths to zero waste. Arthur was a constant student of life and followed the advice his mother gave him early in life: "make yourself useful."
He is preceded in death by his former wife Mary Catherine Haug and wonderful partner of many years Natalie Peterson. He is survived by his children and their families: Ella Webster of Hayes, VA; William Boone & Heidi Quan of Oakland; Isabelle, Nick, & Joseph George of Los Angeles; and Phoebe, Mark, & Adelaide Green of Boston, MA. He will be remembered fondly by his extended family (sister Mary Will Darling and many nieces & nephews) and many in the recycling, zero waste, and tree communities. He made valiant efforts in recycling and reducing waste, and we can best honor his memory by carrying that forward. Plant a tree, recycle, reduce, reuse - and minimize consumption.
In place of flowers, the family requests donations be made to Trees for Oakland, the ACLU, or Planned Parenthood.
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