Flathead businesses are adopting recyclable materials to lessen their impact on the environment, and in some cases, improve the bottom line

Going eco-friendly is getting a better rap from businesses in the Flathead these days.

Business owners are forsaking Styrofoam for paper to-go boxes, plastic grocery sacks for reusable woven bags and espresso cups with java jackets for biodegradable insulated paper coffee cups.

"They use all the right materials," Outback Java Shack owner Nigel Cini said.

The Kalispell businessman was holding a 12-ounce coffee cup that workers in his five drive-up coffee shops fill with espressos and lattes every day. It isn't 100 percent biodegradable, he conceded. But it's close.

It's got a toxicity level of 7 percent - from the waterproofing material, Cini said - whereas most other cups hover around 25 percent. It's totally compostable and recyclable.

His biodegradable cup has the typical smooth, waterproof interior, but the snazzy red sidewalk-cafe motif on the outside is printed on sturdy corrugated paper that is sealed to the inside cup - it's not a java jacket.

Those corrugated channels serve a couple purposes. They trap air that acts as a layer of insulation to keep the coffee hot and they separate the drinker's hand from the heat.

"I think it's a great idea," he said. "I thought it was a great product."

Other shops get the same results with a waffled-paper java jacket, or by using extra cups.

No need for the waste, Cini said, especially when he can import these directly from the manufacturer in Jakarta, Indonesia, and still keep the cost of a cup a penny lower than the cost of a cup and java jacket.

The native-born Australian spotted the cups about four years ago on a trip home, then watched as they spread everywhere across the country and into Canada and even Europe. He searched for 12 months, but found nothing similar here in the United States.

Cini said if he can move them into this country for a year, working out of his Down Under Distributing warehouse on the west side of Kalispell, Detpak, the distributor in Adelaide, Australia, has promised him the American distributorship contract.

"I can do this for no extra cost, and I can bring it in and help," in environmental terms, he said. "So why wouldn't you do that?"

At the Buffalo Cafe in Whitefish, Styrofoam is out and sturdy paper is in for to-go boxes and coffee cups. Nearly everything disposable - including the omnipresent newspapers that customers settle in with over their Buffalo Pies and Andy's Big Breakfast Tacos - goes to the recycling bins.

"We recycle at home and we recycle at the restaurant," Buffalo Cafe owner Linda Maetzold said. "Especially with the number of meals we serve, we feel we need to do everything we can."

She said about 10 or 15 to-go boxes go out the door every day. They have been using the cardboard boxes about a year, and have nearly polished off the last of the old Styrofoam boxes that come in a peculiar size they've been unable to find in cardboard. But when they're out, they won't be replenished.

"A lot of people appreciated the paper go-boxes," she said. Not only are they recyclable, but they're made of recycled material. "We had a hard time finding them. And we found we have to wait for them sometimes."

Her husband Charlie carried the recycling ethic a step further when he made the call to serve beer exclusively in cans when they started opening for evening dinners.

Recycling glass in the Flathead is difficult, and at times nearly impossible. So, he reasoned, get rid of the beer bottles and get rid of one more hassle in the reduce-reuse-recycle chain. They added a note to the menu explaining the philosophy and boosting customer awareness of the need to recycle.

"We even found Corona in cans, and Heineken" and other imports, Maetzold said. "We were afraid with our bottled beer (preference) around here that people wouldn't go for that. But when they see the note on the menu, they love it."

At the back of the house, they hire North Valley Recycling to haul away all their plastics, cans, newspapers and cardboard.

It's an added cost over settling simply for cardboard recycling that the city provides. And buying the recyclable go-boxes is an added cost.

"But we're willing to do that," Maetzold said. "It's the right thing to do."

Grocery and box-store shoppers, too, are finding a little more green in their weekly trips to the market.

Smith's Food & Drug is one of many stores jumping on the bandwagon of selling reusable shopping bags and offering to recycle their customers' plastic shopping bags.

Smith's introduced its reusable woven-polypropylene bag last winter, and sells it for 99 cents. An insulated version, coated with an insulating oil, sells for $1.99.

"We give five cents for any bag a customer brings in, but we encourage using the polypropylene bags," Marsha Gilford said. She is vice president for public affairs for the company based in Salt Lake City. The woven polypropylene bags are washable - an important feature, she said.

"The customer should wash their bag periodically so they can avoid cross contamination between meats and produce and other groceries," she said. "They need more than one bag to keep the meat separate from the produce."

That protects foods, and also sells more bags - a smart business move for Kroger Company, Smith's parent corporation based in Cincinnati.

Kroger also began recycling all its own plastics a few months ago, including the shrink wrap around its pallets of goods. And they set out bins for customers to recycle their bags. Those bins can accept No. 2 plastic such as grocery bags, and No. 4 and No. 7 plastics such as dry-cleaning and newspaper-sleeve bags.

With 14 billion plastic bags used every year - and with paper bags being a poor substitute because they require four times more energy to produce - Gilford said Kroger was doing its part to keep plastics out of landfills.

"This is our environmental effort across the country," she said.

"Customers still can choose paper bags if they want. But plastic and paper both have their environmental impacts, so we encourage reusable."

More than 800 of the bags have sold so far in the Columbia Falls store and 1,000 in the Kalispell store. Gilford said it's a start, but a bit of a slow start.

"We need to do a better job of reminding customers that it's available," she said, "and make the decision to go with reusable."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com