St. Vincent de Paul, both the largest service provider in Lane County and the largest recycler, keeps volumes of material out of the landfill while subsidizing a wide array of services. I had the pleasure of taking a tour of four SVdP recycling sites, each supporting the SVdP mission.
At the Chad Dr. warehouse, books and magazines are sorted by condition, quality, and value. Most go to SVdP’s retail stores, while discards go to online Paper People, which breaks down the paper for reuse. The warehouse “library” holds 120,000 volumes, carefully catalogued with skus and shelved for quick retrieval for online sale.
The Prairie Road recycling warehouse is a hum of furniture building, mattress/boxspring dismantling, and rigid styrofoam compacting. Retailers donate damaged or returned furniture, appreciating a tax write-off, while SVdP pays shipping. Skilled woodworkers build and rebuild sofas and tables for sale at one-third the original price.
SVdP’s mattress recycling, largest in the world, saves 300,000 mattresses and boxsprings from the landfill annually. Workers strip, shred, compress, and bale all components but the cloth covers, which must be thrown out. When asked if workers ever find money in the mattresses, our guide said, “No, just cats and kittens, the animal shelter knows us.”
Mattress foam is compressed and sold in 800 pound bales to carpet manufacturers, wood strips are shirred for biomass, springs are compressed and sold for metal, and syrofoam is compressed for furniture building, Talented mechanics and appliance repair people put vehicles and appliances into working order at Auto and Appliance Sales on Hwy. 99. On West 7th, SVdP creatively “upcycles” clothing into new garments for online sales, targeting young people who love mismatches, holes in the knees, and shirred shoulders.
The entrepreneurial genius applied to SVdP donations and the know-how of longterm employees make St. Vincent de Paul an impressive business, as well as service, organization. Darrel Kau, a fond former FCC choir director, serves as SVdP’s Community Engagement Director. Contact Darrel (darrel.kau@svdp.us) for a tour like mine on a second or fourth Friday
By Brenda Kame’enui
