Ralph’s Thriftway: A Pioneer in Commercial Recycling and Composting

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olympia recycling programs
Ralph’s Thriftway goes beyond the established recycling and composting programs to pursue as many reusable and repurposed efforts as possible. Oil from their deli is collected in fifty gallon drums to eventually be cleaned, filtered and sold by the oil recycling company.

Businesses and municipalities throughout the nation are now adopting ways in which to compost food waste.  Composting large quantities of unused food and reducing the amount of material sent to landfills results in significant environmental benefits and cost savings.

As some of the biggest cities and largest supermarket chains begin composting programs they likely should have called Sally Egan at Ralph’s Thriftway, owned by Stormans Inc..  Egan spearheaded a recycling and composting program at the store long before composting unused food reached our nation’s consciousness.

Egan has been the bookkeeper for Ralph’s Thriftway for 24 years. Despite her financial management role, she did not initially implement the store’s recycling and composting program as a cost savings initiative.  Rather she was inspired by her personal practices at home as an avid recycler. Egan confessed, “I would come to work and be upset about what I was seeing in the garbage.” So she took it upon herself to make a change.

Egan first introduced a recycling program and later pursued composting. She explains, “I got support from my boss and then learned what to do from Spencer Orman, the City of Olympia Waste Management Coordinator. Now, there are so many resources and easily accessible information, but back then I was creating everything on my own.”

Egan explains that she laid out samples of recycled material on her floor at home.

She then took pictures of the items and created posters to be laminated and displayed in the stores’ break room. The posters were a visual tool to help educate co-workers about recyclable materials. Then each morning Egan would go through the recycle bins to make sure everything was in its correct place. Often she would recognize that the intentions were good but items were not in the right place.

The success of commercial recycling and composting programs hinges upon educating participants and ensuring no contamination. “I made it my personal mission to train employees and guarantee non-contamination. In the beginning this was a daily task. Now I just make a quick check once a week,” Egan shares.

olympia recycling
Homemade signage designed by Sally Egan of Ralph’s Thriftway to help educate employees learn what can be recycle or composted and what is garbage.

Once the recycling program was underway, Egan pursued composting. She admits that the composting program grew quickly as the store creates plenty of compostable material, such as produce trimmings, plants from the flower shop, bakery goods, shredded post office paper, and all kinds of food scraps even meat and fish which are staged in the cooler in large bins until pick up day.

The environmental benefits of composting are significant. As food and other organic waste decomposes in landfills, it produces methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Composting, meanwhile, takes that waste and turns it into a rich fertilizer that can then be used to grow more food.

Even though Ralph’s Thriftway has a robust recycling and composting program through the City of Olympia that has tremendously reduced the store’s waste and increased cost savings, Egan felt there was still more that could be done. For example, Ralph’s Chinatown deli uses cooking oil. The store previously paid to dispose of the oil. Now the store collects the used oil in 50-gallon drums for an oil recycling company who then pays Ralph’s so that they can clean, filter and resell the oil.

Additionally, Stormans has been well known for initiating a plastics recycling program for our community. Not only do the locally owned stores provide a drop off location for customers but they also collect their own plastics from shrink wrapped pallets and floral deliveries for recycling.

Yet there remained one item for which Egan struggled to find a recycling or composting solution – styrofoam. Some floral and produce packaging use styrofoam, which cannot be included in the regular recycling and composting. However, through Egan’s research she discovered a local styrofoam recycler who was willing to accept her loaded up trailer of styrofoam on an as needed basis.

olympia recycling program
The large compost and recycling bins are kept behind the store and now outnumber garbage pickup in both size and frequency.

Dedicated recycling and composting programs are often not apparent. Most of the efforts are in the back rooms of the store or in the large bins tucked away in the alley. While we might not see all the recycling and composting conducted at Ralph’s Thriftway, their endeavors have not gone unnoticed. Stormans has been recognized as an environmental leader in our community since the early 1990s. In 1992, Stormans Inc. received a proclamation from the Mayor for its recycling efforts and a recycling award from the Washington State Department of Ecology for the best commercial recycling pilot program. In 1995 Stormans received a Solid Waste Reduction and Recycling award again from the Washington State Department of Ecology. And for Egan’s collaborative work with Orman in helping to promote commercial composting she is featured in the City of Olympia’s Commercial Organics Collection brochure.

To learn more about the City of Olympia’s commercial composting click here.

 

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