Gimme 5 at Durango Natural Foods
Hooray for Durango Natural Foods! Read on …
Recycling No. 5: Durango store offers chance to bring in plastic tubs
Herald Staff Writer
The Gimme 5 campaign of Preserve Products isn’t a high five but still it’s a celebration — that of reducing energy consumption by recycling the No. 5 plastic (polypropylene) it uses to manufacture a variety of household and personal-care products. The “5″ refers to the number in the triangular recycling symbol on tubs in which many products are packaged.
Durango Natural Foods, located at the corner of East Eighth Avenue and east College Drive, accepts clean and dry No. 5 plastic containers – but only No. 5 tubs – for recycling. They can be left at the check stand from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. There’s a charge of 5 cents per container to help defray the cost of shipping the plastic to Preserve Products, which recycles the plastic.
Durango Natural Foods joined the effort this month and is the only place in La Plata County to accept No. 5 plastic tubs for recycling. Clean, dry containers can be left with the cashier, who will record the transaction by punching a Gimme 5 icon on the cash register.
“It’s catching on slowly, but going very well,” cashier Laura Rockwell said Tuesday.
But the cooperative at East Eighth Avenue and east College Drive doesn’t stand to collect enough No. 5 tubs to qualify for Preserve-paid shipment as does industry giant Whole Foods Market. So DNF has added its own twist to the number 5 — the nickel per container it charges to help defray the cost of shipping plastic for recycling to Preserve in Cortland, N.Y.
No one has complained so far, Rockwell said.
Sally McDermott, who was making her way to the cashier’s stand with a quart of yogurt, said the nickel is no big deal.
“I didn’t know about No. 5 recycling,” McDermott said. “But I’ll return this tub and other old ones that I’ve resisted throwing away.”
Yogurt, cottage cheese, humus, ketchup, sour cream and baby wipes are consumer products commonly packaged in polypropylene. Polypropylene is lighter than No. 1 plastic (polyethylene terephthalate) used to make soda or water bottles or No. 2 plastic (polyethylene) used to package cleaning products or some dairy products.
Jules Masterjohn, the cooperative’s community outreach coordinator, said the decision to recycle No. 5 tubs is the second major move the store has made to reduce the use of plastic. In May 2008, the store stopped bagging purchases in plastic and began charging 20 cents for each paper bag. Customers now bring their own bags or buy a reusable one, she said.
“We doing our best to clean up after ourselves,” Masterjohn said. “A lot of people think they’re recycling but the plastic they put out ends up in a landfill, gets shipped to China to be burned to produce power or ends up in the Pacific Ocean.”
The mention of the Pacific Ocean was a reference to the North Pacific gyre, a vortex created by wind and currents in the ocean between San Francisco and Hawaii where a patch of largely plastic debris twice the size of Texas swirls endlessly.
“I started researching the issue of No. 5 plastic earlier this summer after Kelli Reese, our general manager, learned that a cooperative where she worked in Hendersonville, N.C., had started to recycle No. 5,” Masterjohn said. “No one else around here is doing it as far as I know.”
“I think it’s great,” Jill Quam, the recycling program assistant for the city of Durango, said of the effort. “When the city gets its new recycling center, we want to accept clip board (cereal box material) as well as a wider range of plastics.”
The city currently accepts only bottle-shaped receptacles made of No. 1 and No. 2 plastic.
Preserve manufactures plastic toiletry items (tooth brushes and disposal razors), tableware (plates and glasses) and kitchen items (bowls and food storage units) — all from recycled plastic. The company has found that recycling polypropylene instead of using virgin polypropylene uses 54 percent less water, 75 percent less oil, 48 percent less coal, 77 percent less natural gas and 46 percent less electricity. The process also reduces greenhouse gases by 64 percent.
Tags: Environment, recycling
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