Jessica Christiansen
HOPR 1105
5-8-06
(revised)
Recycling at Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart is the biggest corporation in the world (Hightower, 2002). So accordingly, they must produce a lot of waste. I wanted to know what they do with that waste and what impact this has on the environment. Recycling, by definition, is “the reuse of materials, either pre-consumer or post-consumer, that would ordinarily be considered waste” (Holder). Recycling is a very important thing for everyone, even big corporations, to be aware of as a way to maintain and improve the conditions of our environment. Recycling “helps lessen the amount of waste that goes into landfills, reduces the amount of toxic chemicals absorbed into the earth, and in some cases, significantly reduces manufacturing costs and energy consumption” (Holder). It is very important that corporations involve themselves with recycling; and, I found that Wal-Mart does do quite a bit. They have the Kid’s Recycling Challenge, and their newly invented program the “sandwich bale.” They also have two experimental “green stores,” and they try to donate some of their damaged goods and things like broken bags of dog food to places in the community that need them.
The “sandwich bale” is a new invention that Wal-Mart came up with to deal with the amount of plastic they were producing and sending to landfills. Wal-Mart teamed up with a company called Rocky Mountain Recycling in January of 2005. Wal-Mart was looking for a way to get rid of the apparel bags and stretch-wrap film. Jeff Ashby, the sales and marketing manager for Rocky Mountain Recycling, was told by people in his neighborhood that the amount of
plastic that was being thrown away at Wal-Mart was becoming a problem. Just about every garment that comes into the Wal-Mart store is inside its own individual plastic bag. These bags are used to help keep the clothing garments clean, and to help keep them from wrinkling. Ashby saw this as a potential problem, and also as an area for Wal-Mart to work on improving. To see just how extensive the problem was, they started to collect the plastic. Not long after they started collecting the plastic, they were running out of room to store it all. Someone asked why they couldn’t just put the plastic bags in the bailer to compact them and make it easier to store. This was the start of the plan that eventually evolved into the “sandwich bale.” Ashby and others from Rocky Mountain Recycling worked with Wal-Mart to come up with a way to make this compacted plastic work, and they invented the “sandwich bale.” They sandwiched 9 - 12 inches of plastic between 9 - 12 inches of cardboard to form the bale. (Orloski, 2005).
This “sandwich bale” is a new way for Wal-Mart stores to recycle this plastic. One of the biggest concerns when recycling plastic is the cost to transport and store it. John Magnuson, owner of the transfer station and recycling center here in Bemidji, explained the difficulties of recycling plastic. He said that the biggest problem with recycling plastic is that it takes a lot of plastic to make enough bales to make the cost to transport the plastic worth it (personal communication, April 29, 2006). He told us that if he were to collect soda bottles for a whole year, it would take up so much space in his storage facilities, and would only make one or two bales if he put it into the bailer (personal communication, April 29, 2006). Also, most of the markets for plastic are not always close to the recycling center, and because plastic is so lightweight, and there is not a lot of value placed on it, it doesn’t really support the cost of the transportation to distant markets (personal communication, April 29, 2006).
Another problem with recycling plastic is that there are so many different kinds of plastic. Magnuson used the example of a pop bottle. The cap is one type of plastic, the label is another kind of plastic, and the bottle itself is another kind of plastic. He also explained that there needs to be an available market for anything that you recycle. If no one wants to buy compacted plastic bales, or paper, or aluminum cans, it would not be cost effective enough to recycle them, because it would end up costing you more than it would if you were to just throw them away.
The reason that Wal-Mart’s “sandwich bale” looks so promising is because it addresses these issues of transportation, storage, and the mixtures of plastic. As the marketing and sales manager for Rocky Mountain Recycling, Ashby found a market for the plastic garment bags. He found that companies like Trex and Boise Cascade that make composite lumber were looking for plastic for large distribution centers. These companies love the mix of high and low density polyethylene (plastic) that has been collected by Wal-Mart. They say that it is the perfect mix of three grades of plastic that’s used for making the plastic lumber. (Orloski, 2005).
Ashby also found a way to address the issue of storing the plastic. They used Wal-Mart's beach ball displays. The 4’–x– 4’–x–10’ high wire or plastic tubed displays work really well. Ashby says that they have been very happy with the cleanliness of the bales. They had expected there to be food wrappers and pop cans and things like that, but says that the beach-ball bins are so open it’s really easy to see anything that doesn’t belong in them, so they work great. (Orloski, 2005).
The other problem of transportation has been taken care of with the “sandwich bale” also. In Orloski’s article, “Waste ‘sandwich’ helps Wal-Mart Recycle,” she explains that Rocky Mountain Recycling picks up the bales and separates the plastic from the cardboard, then ships each material to the appropriate customer. Don, the assistant manager here at the Bemidji Wal-Mart explained that the same truck that used to pick up the bales of cardboard come and pick up the new “sandwich bales” and do the same thing that Rocky Mountain Recycling does (personal communication, April 8, 2006). They separate the plastic from the corrugated paper, and ship both the plastic and the paper to the appropriate places.
Wal-Mart reports that so far, even though this new process of “sandwich baling” is in its pilot stages, it is doing very well. So far, they have tried it in 326 stores, and in the second month, the average pounds of recovered plastic from the top ten stores was 2,748 lbs. This could mean that for the 326 pilot stores, 895,848 lbs total could be collected. This is equal to 448 tons of plastic per month and 5,376 tons of plastic per year that’s kept out of landfills. To give you an idea of how much plastic this is, it would fill up a football field size container stacked 150 ft. high! (Wal-Mart Environmental Fact Sheet)
Another new program that Wal-Mart is involved with that stemmed from the “sandwich bale” invention is called the Kid’s Recycling Challenge. This program gives children the chance to learn about their environment while earning money for their schools. This program allows kids from California and from Salt Lake City, Utah in grades K – 6 to collect plastic shopping bags and bring them to their school where they are collected in 60 gallon bags. Then, the school turns these bags in and gets $5 for every 60 gallon bag full of plastic bags. There are also monetary prizes for the top three schools that collect the most bags. Third place gets $500, second place gets $1000, and first place gets $1500 plus an environmentally themed school assembly. So far, there have been 400 schools that have participated. These schools have done remarkably well recycling 209,000 lbs. (104.5 tons) of plastic. They have also earned more that $116,000 from the Wal-Mart Foundation. (Wal-Mart Kid’s Recycling Challenge).
Wal-Mart is also looking for new ways to help the environment and to recycle in a slightly unconventional way. They have developed two experimental “green” stores that are geared to help Wal-Mart “reduce the use of energy and natural resources used in running its stores, reduce the amount of raw materials used in building stores and increase the use of renewable materials” (Forgrieve, 2005). These two stores are located in McKinney, Texas, and in Aurora, Colorado. These stores use wind turbines and solar panels, as well as skylights, and 15 foot tall windows along the top of the walls that let in enough natural light to avoid using artificial lights during the day. These stores also have hot water pipes that run under the floors to provide enough heat to warm the inside of the store. These stores also do a lot in the area of recycling. Pallets are turned into mulch, which is used to make a bed for native plants throughout the parking lot. The Aurora store also has boilers that create heat by burning used motor oil, and used chicken frying grease. Even the countertops in the customer service are recycled. They’re made from a material called Icestone, which is concrete made with 75% of recycled glass. (Forgrieve, 2005).
In the McKinney store, food waste from the produce, meat, dairy, and deli departments is recycled. This waste is usually sent to landfills, but at this store, it is sent to a local commercial composting facility where it is processed and made into compost. This compost is then made available for purchase in other stores, thus decreasing the impact of organic waste in local landfills (McKinney Store, walmartstores.com). Wal-Mart hasn’t said how much it cost to build these two stores, but the company has committed itself to monitoring these stores for three years to see if they are really making a difference; and, they are looking to see if they should implement these practices in other cities (Forgrieve, 2005).
Overall, Wal-Mart does its share of recycling. However, compared to companies like Target, they are not outstanding. Basically, each company does different things to recycle and help the environment. Dick Pastor, director of Wal-Mart’s Environmental Management group said, “We are constantly looking for ways to improve the amount of material that can be recycled and eliminate as much waste material as possible” (Orloski, 2006). Wal-Mart is certainly doing different things to help the environment, but there’s always room for improvement.
REFERENCES
Forgrieve, J. (2005, November 9). Wal-Mart goes green: From solar to recycling,
Aurora store designed as test space for chain. Rocky Mountain News. Retrieved March 28, 2006, from LexisNexis database.
Hightower, J. (2002, May 8). Wal-Mart: The world’s biggest corporation. CorpWatch.
Retrieved April 25, 2006, from: http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=6848
McKinney Store. Retrieved April 25, 2006, from: http://www.walmartstores.com/GloblaWMStoresWeb/navigate.do?catg=445&con tId=5639
Orloski, A. (2005, August). Waste ‘sandwich’ helps Wal-Mart recycle. Enviroscope. Retrieved March 28, 2006, from: http://www.packworld.com/articles/Features/19644.html
Wal-Mart Kids Recycling Challenge! (n.d.). Retrieved March 25, 2006, from: http://www.kidsrecyclingchallenge.com/index.html
Wal-Mart Environmental Fact Sheet. (n.d.). Retrieved March 28, 2006, from: http://www.walmartfacts.com/docs/acres_for_america_wm_enviro_fact_sheet.pdf
Holder, A. (n.d.). Recycling. Retrieved March 25, 2006, from: http://www.homeprojects.org/recycling.php?
HOPR 1105
5-8-06
(revised)
Recycling at Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart is the biggest corporation in the world (Hightower, 2002). So accordingly, they must produce a lot of waste. I wanted to know what they do with that waste and what impact this has on the environment. Recycling, by definition, is “the reuse of materials, either pre-consumer or post-consumer, that would ordinarily be considered waste” (Holder). Recycling is a very important thing for everyone, even big corporations, to be aware of as a way to maintain and improve the conditions of our environment. Recycling “helps lessen the amount of waste that goes into landfills, reduces the amount of toxic chemicals absorbed into the earth, and in some cases, significantly reduces manufacturing costs and energy consumption” (Holder). It is very important that corporations involve themselves with recycling; and, I found that Wal-Mart does do quite a bit. They have the Kid’s Recycling Challenge, and their newly invented program the “sandwich bale.” They also have two experimental “green stores,” and they try to donate some of their damaged goods and things like broken bags of dog food to places in the community that need them.
The “sandwich bale” is a new invention that Wal-Mart came up with to deal with the amount of plastic they were producing and sending to landfills. Wal-Mart teamed up with a company called Rocky Mountain Recycling in January of 2005. Wal-Mart was looking for a way to get rid of the apparel bags and stretch-wrap film. Jeff Ashby, the sales and marketing manager for Rocky Mountain Recycling, was told by people in his neighborhood that the amount of
plastic that was being thrown away at Wal-Mart was becoming a problem. Just about every garment that comes into the Wal-Mart store is inside its own individual plastic bag. These bags are used to help keep the clothing garments clean, and to help keep them from wrinkling. Ashby saw this as a potential problem, and also as an area for Wal-Mart to work on improving. To see just how extensive the problem was, they started to collect the plastic. Not long after they started collecting the plastic, they were running out of room to store it all. Someone asked why they couldn’t just put the plastic bags in the bailer to compact them and make it easier to store. This was the start of the plan that eventually evolved into the “sandwich bale.” Ashby and others from Rocky Mountain Recycling worked with Wal-Mart to come up with a way to make this compacted plastic work, and they invented the “sandwich bale.” They sandwiched 9 - 12 inches of plastic between 9 - 12 inches of cardboard to form the bale. (Orloski, 2005).
This “sandwich bale” is a new way for Wal-Mart stores to recycle this plastic. One of the biggest concerns when recycling plastic is the cost to transport and store it. John Magnuson, owner of the transfer station and recycling center here in Bemidji, explained the difficulties of recycling plastic. He said that the biggest problem with recycling plastic is that it takes a lot of plastic to make enough bales to make the cost to transport the plastic worth it (personal communication, April 29, 2006). He told us that if he were to collect soda bottles for a whole year, it would take up so much space in his storage facilities, and would only make one or two bales if he put it into the bailer (personal communication, April 29, 2006). Also, most of the markets for plastic are not always close to the recycling center, and because plastic is so lightweight, and there is not a lot of value placed on it, it doesn’t really support the cost of the transportation to distant markets (personal communication, April 29, 2006).
Another problem with recycling plastic is that there are so many different kinds of plastic. Magnuson used the example of a pop bottle. The cap is one type of plastic, the label is another kind of plastic, and the bottle itself is another kind of plastic. He also explained that there needs to be an available market for anything that you recycle. If no one wants to buy compacted plastic bales, or paper, or aluminum cans, it would not be cost effective enough to recycle them, because it would end up costing you more than it would if you were to just throw them away.
The reason that Wal-Mart’s “sandwich bale” looks so promising is because it addresses these issues of transportation, storage, and the mixtures of plastic. As the marketing and sales manager for Rocky Mountain Recycling, Ashby found a market for the plastic garment bags. He found that companies like Trex and Boise Cascade that make composite lumber were looking for plastic for large distribution centers. These companies love the mix of high and low density polyethylene (plastic) that has been collected by Wal-Mart. They say that it is the perfect mix of three grades of plastic that’s used for making the plastic lumber. (Orloski, 2005).
Ashby also found a way to address the issue of storing the plastic. They used Wal-Mart's beach ball displays. The 4’–x– 4’–x–10’ high wire or plastic tubed displays work really well. Ashby says that they have been very happy with the cleanliness of the bales. They had expected there to be food wrappers and pop cans and things like that, but says that the beach-ball bins are so open it’s really easy to see anything that doesn’t belong in them, so they work great. (Orloski, 2005).
The other problem of transportation has been taken care of with the “sandwich bale” also. In Orloski’s article, “Waste ‘sandwich’ helps Wal-Mart Recycle,” she explains that Rocky Mountain Recycling picks up the bales and separates the plastic from the cardboard, then ships each material to the appropriate customer. Don, the assistant manager here at the Bemidji Wal-Mart explained that the same truck that used to pick up the bales of cardboard come and pick up the new “sandwich bales” and do the same thing that Rocky Mountain Recycling does (personal communication, April 8, 2006). They separate the plastic from the corrugated paper, and ship both the plastic and the paper to the appropriate places.
Wal-Mart reports that so far, even though this new process of “sandwich baling” is in its pilot stages, it is doing very well. So far, they have tried it in 326 stores, and in the second month, the average pounds of recovered plastic from the top ten stores was 2,748 lbs. This could mean that for the 326 pilot stores, 895,848 lbs total could be collected. This is equal to 448 tons of plastic per month and 5,376 tons of plastic per year that’s kept out of landfills. To give you an idea of how much plastic this is, it would fill up a football field size container stacked 150 ft. high! (Wal-Mart Environmental Fact Sheet)
Another new program that Wal-Mart is involved with that stemmed from the “sandwich bale” invention is called the Kid’s Recycling Challenge. This program gives children the chance to learn about their environment while earning money for their schools. This program allows kids from California and from Salt Lake City, Utah in grades K – 6 to collect plastic shopping bags and bring them to their school where they are collected in 60 gallon bags. Then, the school turns these bags in and gets $5 for every 60 gallon bag full of plastic bags. There are also monetary prizes for the top three schools that collect the most bags. Third place gets $500, second place gets $1000, and first place gets $1500 plus an environmentally themed school assembly. So far, there have been 400 schools that have participated. These schools have done remarkably well recycling 209,000 lbs. (104.5 tons) of plastic. They have also earned more that $116,000 from the Wal-Mart Foundation. (Wal-Mart Kid’s Recycling Challenge).
Wal-Mart is also looking for new ways to help the environment and to recycle in a slightly unconventional way. They have developed two experimental “green” stores that are geared to help Wal-Mart “reduce the use of energy and natural resources used in running its stores, reduce the amount of raw materials used in building stores and increase the use of renewable materials” (Forgrieve, 2005). These two stores are located in McKinney, Texas, and in Aurora, Colorado. These stores use wind turbines and solar panels, as well as skylights, and 15 foot tall windows along the top of the walls that let in enough natural light to avoid using artificial lights during the day. These stores also have hot water pipes that run under the floors to provide enough heat to warm the inside of the store. These stores also do a lot in the area of recycling. Pallets are turned into mulch, which is used to make a bed for native plants throughout the parking lot. The Aurora store also has boilers that create heat by burning used motor oil, and used chicken frying grease. Even the countertops in the customer service are recycled. They’re made from a material called Icestone, which is concrete made with 75% of recycled glass. (Forgrieve, 2005).
In the McKinney store, food waste from the produce, meat, dairy, and deli departments is recycled. This waste is usually sent to landfills, but at this store, it is sent to a local commercial composting facility where it is processed and made into compost. This compost is then made available for purchase in other stores, thus decreasing the impact of organic waste in local landfills (McKinney Store, walmartstores.com). Wal-Mart hasn’t said how much it cost to build these two stores, but the company has committed itself to monitoring these stores for three years to see if they are really making a difference; and, they are looking to see if they should implement these practices in other cities (Forgrieve, 2005).
Overall, Wal-Mart does its share of recycling. However, compared to companies like Target, they are not outstanding. Basically, each company does different things to recycle and help the environment. Dick Pastor, director of Wal-Mart’s Environmental Management group said, “We are constantly looking for ways to improve the amount of material that can be recycled and eliminate as much waste material as possible” (Orloski, 2006). Wal-Mart is certainly doing different things to help the environment, but there’s always room for improvement.
REFERENCES
Forgrieve, J. (2005, November 9). Wal-Mart goes green: From solar to recycling,
Aurora store designed as test space for chain. Rocky Mountain News. Retrieved March 28, 2006, from LexisNexis database.
Hightower, J. (2002, May 8). Wal-Mart: The world’s biggest corporation. CorpWatch.
Retrieved April 25, 2006, from: http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=6848
McKinney Store. Retrieved April 25, 2006, from: http://www.walmartstores.com/GloblaWMStoresWeb/navigate.do?catg=445&con tId=5639
Orloski, A. (2005, August). Waste ‘sandwich’ helps Wal-Mart recycle. Enviroscope. Retrieved March 28, 2006, from: http://www.packworld.com/articles/Features/19644.html
Wal-Mart Kids Recycling Challenge! (n.d.). Retrieved March 25, 2006, from: http://www.kidsrecyclingchallenge.com/index.html
Wal-Mart Environmental Fact Sheet. (n.d.). Retrieved March 28, 2006, from: http://www.walmartfacts.com/docs/acres_for_america_wm_enviro_fact_sheet.pdf
Holder, A. (n.d.). Recycling. Retrieved March 25, 2006, from: http://www.homeprojects.org/recycling.php?
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