WBFC's contribution to innovative recycling here in Northern California.
Businesses get creative with recycling
BY ALAN SHECKTER - Staff Writer
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the second story in a three-part series.
At home, recycling plays a role in most of our lives, whether it's an all-out
compost-everything effort, or merely pitching a few cans into a separate
container each week. While residential recycling is important to California's
mandatory effort to divert half its waste formerly destined for landfills, some
local businesses are demonstrating innovative recycling efforts.
One such outfit is Hot Logs, a 16-month-old Chico company that produces firelogs
for wood stoves and fireplaces out of 100 percent recycled material. Hot Logs
are fashioned out of waxed cardboard boxes typically used in the produce
business.
The company operates near the Chico Municipal Airport, from a 52,000-square-foot
hangar. Inside the warehouse Tuesday, in addition to neatly stacked cases of Hot
Logs and bags of shredded Hot Logs fire starters, was an expanse of raw
materials - more than 1,000 pallets, each piled high with boxes that formerly
held vegetables such as lettuce, celery, carrots and spinach. This type of waxed
box used to be treated as non-recyclable "contaminated" cardboard and hauled to
the landfills.
"
The produce boxes are chipped, dried and compressed into real high-density, hot
burning and clean burning fire logs," said Ross Collar, the company's owner.
"
They're as clean burning as Duraflame, (burn) 60 percent cleaner than firewood,
easy on the flues and air quality, and deliver more than 40 percent more BTUs
than the diesel-based logs."
While Hot Logs, which weigh five pounds each and have a retail price of $1.59,
gets most of its cardboard from a produce repackaging plant in Salinas, it also
gets cardboard from S&S Produce and Holiday Market. Hot Logs and Holiday Market
participate in a tidy, full-circle recycling effort.
Holiday Market trucks deliver cardboard to the Hot Logs warehouse, and return to
the stores loaded with Hot Logs, ready for sale. Collar said Hot Logs outsell
all other firelogs in the Holiday chain.
Sierra Nevada Brewery takes part in a recycling effort that was recognized as
one of the top 10 in the state for 2002 by the California Integrated Waste
Management Board.
"
It's the right thing to do," said Sierra Nevada President Ken Grossman. "I
think we carry it a bit further than most."
Sierra Nevada makes its biggest ecological contribution with its spent brewing
grains, including hops and yeast. The company extracts about two-thirds of its
malted barley; the remaining one-third is sold for cattle food.
"
All of those products end up as cattle food for dairy herds in the north
valley," Grossman said, "and some spent yeast feeds cattle down south. Smaller
breweries don't typically collect spent yeast."
And Grossman, who said some of the feed winds up at Chico State University,
where a small herd of cattle is being raised for the brewery's restaurant, said
the company does more.
"
We treat all our own wastewater," he said. "Most breweries don't do that. We're
putting in a little cogeneration plant to generate some of our electricity."
Smucker Quality Beverages, which distributes juices including the Knudsen brand,
also was on the waste management board's list of winners for its annual Waste
Reduction Awards Program for the third year in a row. The company stands at an
86 percent recycle rate, well over the state's 50 percent demand. Knudsen also
added recycle bins for its employees who don't have curbside recycling so they
could bring their recyclable products to work.
In Willows, John Mansville's aggressive recycling program led to its fourth WRAP
award. The building product manufacturer and marketer recently entered into an
agreement to dispose of a portion of its waste at an energy cogeneration plant
in Anderson. In addition, largely due to a program in which the plant's
suppliers accept return packaging for reuse, the Willows location is able to
divert more than 1 million pounds of material from the landfill annually.
At the Enterprise-Record, paper is the name of the game. Sixty tons a week is
delivered to its Park Avenue location, where the E-R, Oroville Mercury-Register,
Red Bluff Daily News and Chico State University's Orion are printed. At least 50
percent of that incoming paper, a state law for commercial printers, comes from
recycled-content newsprint.
The E-R then recycles approximately 64 tons of waste paper each month.
Dave Cowan, the E-R's production manager, said the company makes use of six 2-
and 3-yard bins that fill up with waste paper and are emptied daily. The paper
is taken out to a giant compactor at the back of the property. Once a week,
Cowan said, the Sutta Co., an Oakland-based commercial and industrial recycler,
hauls away the compressed paper.
Cowan said the sale of recycled newspaper "brings in thousands a month."
In addition to newspaper, the E-R recycles about 60 pounds of aluminum press
plates per day, film (every page of the paper creates one to four large sheets
of film), silver that comes from film processing, as well as wooden pallets and
the typical aluminum cans and office paper.
"
Anything that can be recycled, we do," Cowan said.
At Chico State University, the Associated Students Recycling department takes a
proactive role, collecting more than 500,000 pounds of recyclables each year (as
recently as 1998, that figure was only 245,000 pounds per year).
While commercial waste haulers serve the rest of the city of Chico with trash
and curbside recycling service, they pick up only trash on campus. The AS
Recycling staff, which numbers about 25, goes from building to building,
collecting office paper, newspaper, cans, glass and plastic, said Barbara
Kopicki, AS Recycling coordinator. They make use of a flatbed truck, a smaller
electric cart with attached flatbed and an "eco-trike," powered by human legs.
They typically buzz around campus during the day, setting an example for others
with their presence.
"
You usually don't see students as involved as ours," Kopicki said. "Most
schools' recycling efforts are handled by facilities (departments)."
AS Recycling also runs an "adopt-a-block" program, in which students, frequently
fraternities and sororities, clean up trash, rake and clean up gutters in a
given area. Kopicki said the city of Chico provides funding to pay for items
such as bags, gloves and mailers.
In addition, AS Recycling also runs the Recycling and Rubbish Exhibit. R.A.R.E.
offers more than 20 interactive displays, including a walk-through compost bin,
a five-foot-tall garbage can that contains various types of recyclables, and
display panels illustrating trash from different historical eras. Located on
Southgate Lane, it annually hosts about 500 residents, mostly children.
"
R.A.R.E. educates the community about recycling and trash, where it goes and
how we can make better choices," Kopicki said. And hopefully, they'll take (the
information) back with them to their homes."
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