Hooray for Durango Natural Foods! Read on …

Recycling No. 5: Durango store offers chance to bring in plastic tubs

by Dale Rodebaugh, 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.

daler@durangoherald.com

I recently took the time (20 minutes) to watch “The Story of Stuff,” an indictment of our unsustainable habits of consumption, and am eager to see this video expand its already impressive (6 million views) reach. In May, The New York Times did an article about how the video by environmental activist video Annie Leonard was being embraced by teachers around the country.

“Many educators say the video is a boon to teachers as they struggle to address the gap in what textbooks say about the environment and what science has revealed in recent years,” the article reads.

The illustrations and simple language put the sustainability dilemma into terms that kids and adults alike can really get their heads around. It’s a great educational tool for a generation that is being bombarded with marketing messages of frighting sophistication. (Might I also recommend, for younger children, Dr. Suess’ “The Lorax”?)

Obviously, one basic way we can conserve resources is recycling. I find the complexity and limitations of our recycling system consternating. The city is looking at building a new center and will take citizen input at a meeting scheduled for at 5:30 p.m. Thursday in City Council chambers, 949 East Second Ave. Maybe some young people out there would like to show up and make their opinions heard, too.

Okay, so this isn’t directly parent-related other than that helping the environment means this earth will be a better place for our children to live in as they get older. And this good deed comes with a perk. Ska Brewing Co. President Dave Thibodeau, a dad himself, said that the brewery, located in Bodo Industrial Park, happily accepts returns of Ska’s 6-pack holders (I’d asked because the city’s recycling center doesn’t accept paperboard). Thibodeau wrote in an email, “In fact, you get a free pint of beer for every 5 6-pack holders that you bring back!”

So if you enjoy an occasional beer from the boys in Bodo, do the right thing — and enjoy the benefits. (And if you haven’t seen their new digs, it’s well worth the trip).

This past week, NPR’s Science Friday host Ira Flatow interviewed Cy Tymony, the author of “Sneaky Green Uses for Everyday Things.” The book, as the title indicates, is a how-to on ways to turn everyday items, waste especially, into cool gadgets. Among the projects listed in the table of contents are “sneaky mini-boomerang” and “solar cooker project.”

Many of them sound like they could be fun for kids but not having seen the book, I can’t vouch for it. What I would love more than anything is to hear creative ways to use all those yogurt/cottage cheese/sour cream tubs we go through, especially since the city doesn’t accept them for recycling. I’ve tried using them for leftovers, but because they’re not transparent, (and I’m not good about labeling them) they usually end up shoved to the back of the frig, where they slowly turn into toxic sledge. Now we’re actually in need of them to transplant our tomato starts. But the rest of the year, most of them end up getting tossed. I guess I’m especially sensitive to plastic usage these days having read more recently about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a Texas-size gyre or giant eddy of accumulated plastic in the Pacific Ocean. This guy is building a boat of recycled plastic, called Plastiki, to sail to the garbage patch to bring awareness of the problem of waste in our oceans. Meanwhile, Durango is waging its own battle against plastic through the Reusable Bag Challenge, in which ski towns around the West compete to show who can eliminate the most throw-away bag usage. The contest ends September 1.

Any way we can cut down on waste, especially through fun, “sneaky” reuses, sounds like a good idea to me. Any more suggestions?

MORE: In a letter to the editor in Monday’s paper, Janet Reichl, shares some interesting additional information about plastic and the garbage patch.