Jul 20, 2008

From wrappers to tote bags

Palo Alto business starts new recycling campaign

By Kristina Peterson / Daily News Staff Writer

The newest recycling crusade in Palo Alto began with a bet.

This spring, two employees at Whole Travel, a Palo Alto sustainable travel agency, could not come to a consensus over whether the wrappers to energy bars, like Clif and Balance bars, could be recycled.

"He kept putting the wrappers in the recycling bin, and I kept taking them out," said Pam McLeod, Whole Travel's sustainability specialist. "He couldn't believe you couldn't recycle them."

So the pair e-mailed Clif Bar to see who was right.

They found out that though the foil-lined wrappers can't be recycled along with other metal products, Terra Cycle, a New Jersey-based sustainability company, was collecting and reusing the packaging.

So in March, Whole Travel became the first Palo Alto business to join the Energy Bar Brigade, the Terra Cycle program that has collected 200,000 "post-consumer" wrappers since the program launched in January, said spokeswoman Lisa Molendini.

Weighed out, those wrappers would total two tons of waste diverted from landfills, she said.

Instead, the wrappers are being either woven "summer camp-chain-style" or fused together to form a fabric used to make pencil and tote bags, as well as clutch purses, Molendini said. When mass production begins, the bags will be sold to retailers like Target and Office Max and Terra Cycle will donate $0.02 per wrapper to charities, most often to the Adopt-A-Classroom program.

Already in California, between 100 and 150 individuals and associations have joined the program, Molendini said.

At Whole Travel, the company of roughly 15 employees has saved 175 wrappers so far, McLeod said. They need to collect 250 before they can send the pre-paid package back to Terra Cycle.

In order to make sure the shipping does not create excessive carbon dioxide emissions, only ground transportation is used, Molendini said.

While recycling the energy bar packaging may not halt global warming, "it's nice not to throw them out," said McLeod, who by now knows each employee's brand loyalties and consumption habits.

"I just eat a lot of them," said William Smith, the company's director of operations, before dropping a Clif Bar wrapper in the kitchen collection spot. Smith, who had already swam and planned to go on a run later in the day, said at one point he regularly ate two energy bars every day.

Similarly, intern Amy Puliafito, a ballet dancer, said she has a collection of wrappers she intends to bring into the office.

"They're just sitting in a plastic bag in my car. I should bring them in," she said.

The "active" office also includes several triathletes, McLeod said. And as a Santa Clara County green-certified business, Whole Travel already recycles cardboard, paper and plastic, McLeod said.

Meanwhile Terra Cycle has started several other recycling campaigns, including one that similarly turns drink pouches into bags and one that converts yogurt cups into nursery planters spray-painted by inner-city New Jersey graffiti artists.

"They're fun looking," Molendini said.



E-mail Kristina Peterson at kpeterson@dailynewsgroup.com.