Waste Paper Helps Save Wasted Lives -- Successful Recycling Plant Helps Recovering Addicts

Seven years ago, beginning his recovery from drug addiction, Phil Brown volunteered to work at the recycling plant run by his treatment center, Sea-Dru-Nar.

It wasn't much of a plant in those days, just a shed made of shipping containers in the muddy yard behind Sea-Dru-Nar's house in Georgetown. There, Brown and other addicts in treatment spent long days stooping and sorting paper into barrels.

Things have changed since then. The carts of waste office paper are dumped by machine onto a conveyor belt. Sorting is done along the conveyor which then carries a single grade of paper into an automatic bailing machine.

But Brown is still there. Drug-free, he's now marketing manager for Sea-Dru-Nar Recycling, a $2 million per year business.

Located in an old one-story brick warehouse at 649 S. Edmunds St. just north of Georgetown, Sea-Dru-Nar - the name stands for Seattle Drugs and Narcotics - picks up waste paper from 300 businesses plus 106 locations at the Boeing Co.'s factories and offices.

There are also 80 drop boxes throughout the city where residents can deposit old newspapers.

It's a far cry from 1979 when Richard Busby, one of Sea-Dru-Nar's managers, started the recycling operation with the organization's one van and a credit card. Sea-Dru-Nar, then critically short of money, made $36,000 the first year, recycling mostly cans and glass.

In those days, ``recycling was not a real big deal,'' said Brown, who calls himself a recovering addict. (Former addicts, like alcoholics who know where a single drink could lead, never say they have recovered.) Sea-Dru-Nar started recycling bottles and cans and even grease from restaurant kitchens before discovering that paper products were more profitable, he said.

Even so, to get paper to sell, volunteers such as Brown scavenged through dumpsters.

But in 1984, with Brown on the payroll hunting for new sources of paper, things began to change. Sea-Dru-Nar signed a three-year contract to pick up waste paper from Boeing, winning out in competitive bidding against such firms as Weyerhaeuser and Fibres International.

Now Brown is concentrating on major office buildings - Unico Properties Inc., with eight downtown buildings, is a client - convincing landlords recycling can save them save money on garbage bills.

Recycling pays for special parts of the Sea-Dru-Nar treatment program such as movies, a recent four-day retreat to Lake Goodwin and a new van. It also covers the mortgage on some of Sea-Dru-Nar's property. There are four Sea-Dru-Nar residences - one on Capitol Hill, two on Queen Anne Hill and one in Georgetown.

Success for Sea-Dru-Nar, however, is only partly measured by the recycling operation's balance sheet. The real measure is how many of the 100 or so addicts who enter the treatment program each year make it through and have a chance of permanently staying off drugs.

As the recycling business has grown, the ``split rate'' - the number of people who leave the 12- to 18-month treatment program early - has dropped steadily, said Nan Busby, executive director and one of three ex-addicts who formed Sea-Dru-Nar in 1968. Nowadays, about half make it through the program, she said.

Work at the recycling plant has become a major part of the treatment program, though it's voluntary. ``It is treatment,'' said Sea-Dru-Nar bookkeeper Linda Bolima, when asked how much money the recyling business contributed to the treatment program.

``Dope fiends have to be kept busy,'' said Busby. Daily, about 30 to 35 of Sea-Dru-Nar's clients - as the addicts in treatment are called - are signed up for work at the recycling center. Former addicts including Brown make up a permanent staff of 12 with a payroll of $320,000.

Taking a break from the sorting conveyor or hopping down from a forklift, volunteers at the recycling plant talk about developing work habits they never had before. ``It gets me used to working again,'' said Kellye Bain, 29, whose only activity for several years before treatment was selling drugs.

Theresa Gray, 32, finds the work ``gives me a whole new way of life . . . because I never had a job before.''

``We really didn't have good work habits,'' said Jay Larsen, 38.

Many who come away from Sea-Dru-Nar Recycling at the end of treatment have gained skills as equipment operators and truck drivers. In the work force, Sea-Dru-Nar graduates ``stick out like a sore thumb,'' said Keith Lykken, assistant plant manager, because they work so diligently on regular jobs.

Employers find that's true and often drop by and leave their business cards, looking for people to hire, said Brown.

Lykken, who teaches clients to drive forklifts and a front loader which scoops cardboard into a hopper for bailing, says his goal ``is to teach people to be here on time, to work hard and don't try to cut corners.''

A former addict himself, Lykken, 35, stayed with Sea-Dru-Nar because he believes in the program. One who teaches by example, he's proud of his no-absence work record and of raising his daughter himself.

``It's kind of an addict-help-addict program in treatment and addict-train-addict in recycling,'' said Brown.

As a result, Lykken and Brown can be as hard on others as they have been on themselves. When someone wants to drop out, those who've made it are there to counsel and persuade them to stay.

``We make them stick with it until they like the job,'' said Brown. ``Where would they go?'' he asked rhetorically, suggesting that those who leave would be certain to return to drugs.

Looking around the busy plant where a dozen workers rolled bins of discarded office paper out of Sea-Dru-Nar trucks, he said, ``We recycle people here . . . and we recycle paper.''