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Letter to the editor

Many colors combine for a green statement

Detergent. Bleach. Fabric softener. A coin laundry owner sees an opportunity in their emptiness.

By M.E. Baker, Times Correspondent
Published February 27, 2008

ST. PETERSBURG

Last January, Cliff Bertucci decided to start a collection.

Plastic bottles. Just "an experimental type thing," he says.

Not just any bottles. The bottles that liquid laundry detergent, bleach, and assorted fabric softeners and brighteners come in.

Jugs so big you have to work out to pick them up. Small bottles proclaiming "3x Concentrated." If it was plastic, and customers left it behind at his Wash-N-Go Laundromat on Haines Road, he tossed it into a bin behind his business. The bin, which originally held about half a cord of firewood, consisted of a circle of wire fencing about 5 feet high attached to a 4- by 4-foot shipping pallet.

One bin grew to two. Two, to three. And they kept growing. At the end of a year, he was surprised by what he had accumulated.

"This is a lot of plastic," he says.

Nine bins sit in two orderly rows, mounds of bottles creating a hilly polyethylene topography. Orange bottles. Blue bottles. Yellow, red and green bottles. About 720 cubic feet of molded petroleum derivative.

Bertucci doesn't know how many bottles are in his collection. But he knows this. His is a small facility - only 17 washers and 14 dryers, about half the size of a typical laundry. There are probably 10 similar businesses within a mile, he figures. The math is left unfinished, but the conclusion obvious.

Bertucci doesn't call himself a "tree hugger," although he has been a member of the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society. His sentiments run along a parallel track, however. He began selling organic pest control down the street at his other business, Gulf Coast Garden Center, 10 years ago.

For some time, he has been recycling the large black pots that trees and large plants are sold in.

He lives in Pinellas Park, where the city claims recyclable castoffs once a week at curbs.

Bertucci's glad of that and critical of the city of St. Petersburg for its lack of a program.

Next up for Bertucci: arrange the bins in front of the laundry and take a picture. He'll send the photograph and a writeup to an industry trade magazine.

Bertucci hopes his experiment will initiate a conversation among coin laundry owners. "If every industry would pick out one thing to recycle," he says, "we'd all be better off."

The collection is kaput: the yearlong experiment is over. Now, he'll recycle bottles as the designated garbage can inside, by the water cooler, is filled.

And he has to find someone to pick up nine pallets of plastic.

How to recycle plastic bottles

Empty bottles that contained liquids such as soda or soap.

- In the past, you had to search for a code number 1 or 2. Now you don't need to worry about numbers. If it's plastic, recycle it.

- "Check for a neck." You can recycle any plastic container with a neck. For example, a plastic milk jug has a neck, so you can recycle it, but yogurt and margarine containers do not.

- Examples of plastic bottles you can recycle include: water, soda, milk, juice, ketchup, mouthwash, liquid household cleaners, shampoo, salad dressing, laundry detergent and syrup. No tubs, cups, trays, six-pack rings or bags.

- Rinse bottles. Remove and throw away caps or pumps. Labels are okay.

- Recycle plastic bottles (20-ounce only) through the TerraCycle Bottle Brigade Campaign, which provides free collection boxes with prepaid return shipping. Schools or nonprofits can earn revenue with this program.

- Businesses can ask their trash hauler or recycler if they will pick up plastic bottles for recycling. Waste Management Recycle America, (813) 394-1325, and Waste Services, 572-6800, will consider picking up cans or bottles for business customers if there are sufficient quantities.

- Visit www.pinellascounty.org/utilities/getridofit/.

[Last modified February 26, 2008, 20:33:41]