Recycling Part 3: The Business of Recycling

by Sheila Helmberger

We are successful at consciously recycling on a small scale, family by family, within our own homes, but when we do it at our place of business, on a larger scale, the impact is even more impressive.

Numbers from about four years ago estimated the solid waste in our country totaled about four and a half pounds per person per day. That is approximately 1,368,268,760 (more than one billion) pounds of waste per day. Since we spend a majority of our time away from our homes, at our jobs, it only made sense to step up our recycling efforts there as well.

Today many of our offices and companies, whether large or small, have incorporated successful programs that include collecting items for recycling and separating the goods on site: paper from plastic from aluminum and such.

Doug Morris, Crow Wing County's Solid Waste Coordinator, said most businesses in the county do engage in their own programs and some are even able, because of the nature of their business, to run them self-contained without services from the county. Moris said two businesses that do a great job in his county are Crow Wing Power and Wal-Mart, with its program headed by the company's 'Green Team'.

Char Kinzer is the public relations director for Crow Wing Power. Kinzer said Crow Wing Power has been actively recycling for about 20 years. The company encourages employees to deposit items like cardboard, paper, cans, and bottles in the proper receptacles, placed throughout the building.

"It's really just second nature now," said Kinzer, about the cooperation of the company's employees.

Kinzer said she really feels that most businesses probably participate in extensive recycling programs for their own employees and their customers. "I'd be surprised if everybody isn't doing it in this day and age. It's certainly something everyone should be doing." She said there is power in numbers.

"We have 100 employees so when everyone contributes that makes a real impact," she said.

"It's an easy thing to do," she said, "We promote it in the public as well. We really promote all sorts of environmental programs. We spread the news to our 26,000 members whenever we can."

So the collective efforts of even larger, nation-wide companies like Target, Home Depot and Wal-Mart can made a great difference in saving the environment. Walmart's corporate headquarters are located in Bentonville, Arkansas. A representative from the home office said the company and its stores sent about 25 billion pounds of cardboard in the past three years to paper mills in the United States and Asia for recycling. That's about 216 million trees worth. A new method they created for transporting hard to haul, yet recyclable items called the 'sandwich bale' has helped Walmart and Sam's Clubs nationwide divert more than 182 million pounds of plastic from being sent to their local landfills.

Creating less packaging is another way vending companies are helping to cut down on waste and yet another successful effort by most stores we frequent include offering reusable shopping bags.

At home and at work we should all be doing everything we can to contribute to the sustainability of the world around us. In the past ten years the numbers have skyrocketed for the tons of things we choose to find ways to reuse and not destroy.

Have you ever went to throw a plastic bottle or can into a regular garbage can and caught yourself - choosing instead to holding on to it until you could found a recycling bin? We do it without thinking anymore. And that's a wonderful thing.