A Grocery List Of Recycling Efforts

"Going green" was all the rage at the supermarket a year ago, amid the hype and hoopla of the 20th annual Earth Day. Everybody in the food world, it seemed, was claiming to be environmentally friendly.

So where are we now, with Earth Day rolling around once again Monday? Here's an update:

Packaging. "It's been a phenomenal year," says Joel Makower, Washington, D.C.-based author of the "The Green Consumer Supermarket Guide" Penguin Books, $6.95). "Nearly every consumer-goods manufacturer has taken a hard look at their products. There's been a lot of reduction in packaging, a lot of rethinking of packaging, and companies are making an effort to switch to better packaging."

Shopping. "The big change is that people are starting to look at packaging a little more," Makower says. He thinks shoppers are realizing they pay more for "overpackaged" products, and are changing their buying habits accordingly.

Recycling. "The number of people recycling around Seattle has gone up," says Carl Woestendiek, waste-reduction planner for Seattle's Solid Waste Utility. By the end of 1990, 83 percent of Seattle households were participating in the city's curbside recycling program - up from 77 percent at the end of 1989, Woestendiek said.

Bagging. Reusable canvas shopping bags aren't as hot as they were a year ago but sell steadily, says Brad Wilson, owner of Jensen Lee Corp. near Bellingham, which began making the canvas bags early last year.

The company was swamped with bag orders last spring. Sales peaked in June, dropped sharply and finally leveled off. Wilson estimates he's sold 50,000 bags to Northwest supermarkets, half of them through May of last year.

But if the garbage gurus see improvements in the world of waste, they also see persistent problems. The term "recyclable" is still confusing and is sometimes slapped on products that nobody is accepting to be recycled.

Makower and other critics target nonrecyclable packaging of all sorts, including asceptic (shelf-stable) fruit-juice containers. Made of laminated paper, foil and plastic, the little boxes are much-loved by kids but can't be recycled because the materials are too hard to separate.

So-called overpackaging - using more packaging than seems needed - takes brickbats. Besides wasting resources and adding to the country's growing garbage heap, such packaging costs consumers more money, Makower says.

He suggests choosing similar products in simpler packaging and cites this example: Cup O' Noodles and Top Ramen Oriental Noodle Soup, both made by Nissan Foods.

Top Ramen, which comes wrapped only in a plastic bag, is a little brick of dried noodles to which you add water and, if desired, your own vegetables. Cup O' Noodles is dried noodles and vegetables in a microwavable plastic-foam cup that's wrapped in cellophane and then a cardboard sleeve. One heats and eats Cup O' Noodles in the same cup, then throws it out. Top Ramen requires using and washing your own pan and bowl or just a microwave-safe bowl.

"On an-ounce-by-ounce basis, the one with the Styrofoam cup costs about 50 percent more," Makower says. In the Seattle area the cup can't be recycled (although some QFC stores accept certain other plastic-foam containers for recycling).

The higher price for Cup O' Noodles includes the dried vegetables, of course, plus something many consumers may value even more: microwavable convenience. That asset accounts for an array of nonrecyclable packaging.

Example: the microwavable plastic bowls that hold shelf-stable entrees, such as Chef Boyardee Main Meals, Dinty Moore Beef Stew and many others. Many of these have a No. 7 recycling symbol on the bottom: plastic not recyclable in the Seattle area. (See accompanying chart.)

Like plastic margarine tubs, these bowls can be saved and reused for storage, up to a point. "I ask people, `How many margarine tubs can you use in your life?' " Makower says.

Close to home, Nalley Fine Foods of Tacoma makes a chili con carne sold in both a conventional can that's recyclable and in a shelf-stable, microwavable plastic bowl that's not. Again, convenience costs money: Ounce for ounce, the chili in the microwavable plastic dish costs nearly twice as much as the canned chili.

"We try to make (packages) as environmentally friendly as possible, but we have to consider the market," says Nalley executive Mike Madden.

Manufacturers challenge the term "overpackaged," saying all those packaging parts are needed. The elaborate carton around the microwavable bowl of Hormel's Dinty Moore Beef Stew not only carries the labeling, but protects the bowl during shipping, says Dennis Boik, Hormel's recycling manager. And he notes that the shelf-stable container saves power by eliminating the need for freezing.

He says the company has already reduced its overall packaging volume and is looking at ways to replace the beef stew's cardboard carton with a label on the bowl. For the bowl, there's research progress in two directions: toward newer, recyclable plastic, and toward new technology for recycling the old plastic.

In either case, he says, convenience is critical. "Consumers vote with their dollars every time they go the supermarket, and right now they're saying they want convenience."

Other companies also claim greener packaging efforts. The label on a Le Menu frozen entree says its packaging has been reduced by 25 percent, and a report from Kraft says that narrowing the thickness of the inner trays in the Oscar Mayer Lunchables by only two-thousandths of an inch "saves hundreds of thousands of pounds of material annually."

For shoppers, Makower counsels a practical approach. For instance, he says the best grocery bag is the one you reuse or recycle, whatever it's made of.

"I tell people, don't expect too much, either of yourself or the products. Don't expect to be a perfectly green consumer." ------------------------------------------------------------ Plastic recycling

These symbols will help you recycle some plastics. However, only those containers with numbers 1 and 2 on the bottom are accepted in the Seattle city recycling program. City recycling facilities do not yet accept containers with numbers 3 through 7.

For other recycling information, inside or outside of Seattle, call the state's Recycling Hotline, 1-800-RECYCLE.

1-PET Polyethylene Terephthalate

Includes beverage bottles (like 2-litter pop bottles.) only soda and liquor bottles are accepted at curbside in Seattle. Other items are accepted at:

Solid Waste Utility North Transfer Station: North 31st Street and Carr Place North.

Solid Waste Utility South Transfer Station: Second Avenue South and South Kenyon Street.

Phinney Neighborhood Center: 6532 Phinney Ave. N.

University Village Safeway: 3020 N.E. 45th St.

Ravenna Puget Consumers Co-op: 6504 20th Ave. N.E.

Admiral Way Thriftway: 2320 42nd Ave. S.W.

Seward Park Consumers Co-op: 5041 Wilson Ave. S.

Lake City Thriftway: 12015 31st Ave. N.E.

2-HDPE High Density Polyethylene

Includes milk and juice jugs; some yogurt containers; soap, detergent, shampoo and lotion bottles. These items are accepted only at drop sites.

3-V Vinyl

Includes cooking oil bottles and packaging around meat.

4-LDPE Low Density Polyethylene

Includes grocery store produce bags, bread bags and food wrap. Pay'N Save stores accept plastic bags.

6-PS Polystyrene

Includes a firm variety and the softer, expanded polystyrene better known as Styrofoan. Containers include hot beverage cups, some yogurt containers, fast food clamshell containers, egg cartons and meat trays. Some QFC stores accept polystyrene containers.

SOURCE: National Association for Plastic Recovery ------------------------------------------------------------ Lisa Remillard / Seattle Times