Last month, organic food entrepreneur Jason Mahon became director of Alameda County’s Source Reduction and Recycling Board, bringing with him the drive and problem-solving savvy needed to put Alameda County head and shoulders above its trashier neighbors.
Mahon believes a lot of recyclable material could be kept out of landfills if the county made it mandatory for apartment buildings and office buildings to recycle. He also wants the county to keep a closer eye on private garbage companies, and would like to see money invested in sorting facilities to give collected garbage a thorough going-through to look for recyclable material so it doesn’t end up in a landfill.
By Bill Picture
Published: November, 2011
Last month, organic food entrepreneur Jason Mahon became director of Alameda County’s Source Reduction and Recycling Board, bringing with him the drive and problem-solving savvy needed to put Alameda County head and shoulders above its trashier neighbors.
Going by the name StopWaste.org and including a few mayors and city council members, environmentalists and waste reduction/diversion experts, the board has created programs to promote source reduction, recycling and the development and procurement of eco-friendly products to replace traditional landfill-bound ones.
"We have to change behaviors," said Mahon, a 32-year-old Ohio native who moved to the Bay Area in 1999 to be a part of the high-tech industry. "We have to do whatever it takes to get people and companies to change the way that they do things, to be greener. And that isn’t easy."
Mahon said that recycling wasn’t a priority back in Ohio, but says it didn’t take long for the Bay Area to gets its crunchy claws into him and inspire him to rethink his relationships with food and the environment.
"I didn’t know anything about organic food when I moved here," he said. "Then I started reading a lot about it, and how it’s better for you and better for the environment. First my diet changed. Then everything started to change."
In 2001, Mahon and two of his friends started Premier Organics, which offered a modest variety of raw foods. The company’s focus has since narrowed to organic, nothing-added nut butters, which it manufactures in small, handcrafted batches at its facility in east Oakland and distributes to retailers all over the country and on the web. Last year, the company reported $7 million in revenue.
Thinking ever-greener
"I was really happy with what we were doing but I thought, ‘Why stop there?’" he said. "So I started really looking at how things were done, and I saw how much waste was being created. I thought, ‘If we really want to be a natural company, we need to do something about this.’"
Mahon’s first order of business was redesigning the company’s packaging to minimize waste. That, in turn, led him to looking into developing biodegradable packaging materials.
But it was while researching how Premier Organics’ products are shipped that Mahon happened upon one of the biggest ways that manufacturers can curb waste. Mahon learned that, in order for a pallet of product to be moved safely (and easily), it must be wrapped tightly. Typically, a plastic film similar to Saran Wrap is used. The problem is that a pallet will be broken open numerous times during the course of the shipping process, both for inspections and so that its contents can be divided to fulfill numerous orders. Because the plastic film used can’t be unwrapped, whenever the pallet must be broken open, the film is cut and thrown away. When the time comes to move the pallet again, it’s rewrapped in new film.
"Think about every product that gets shipped on a pallet," he said. "That’s a lot of plastic film getting put in the trash." Mahon was sure there must be a better way, so he set out to find a greener pallet wrap. That search led him to an organic food broker in Canada, who’d developed a reusable wrap years earlier.
Sure his wasn’t the only company that would recognize the value of the reusable wrap, Mahon got in touch with other companies, including so-called green companies like Whole Foods, to let them know that they could eliminate a lot of landfill-bound waste by using the reusable wrap he’d found.
"And no one was interested," he said. "They wouldn’t even return my calls. Even with green companies, it’s really hard to get them to change how they do things."
Mahon eventually applied for grant money from StopWaste.org to pay for the reusable wraps. He got enough to cover Premier Organics’ needs, along with extras that he’s given to other local companies to try, in the hopes they’ll make the switch too.
Taking on the county
Back in the early days of Premier Organics, Mahon led landfill tours for new employees, to share his passion for waste reduction. It was during one of those tours that he learned that garbage isn’t sorted in Alameda County the way it is in other counties. Thus, if recyclable or compostable materials mistakenly end up in the wrong bin, they end up in a landfill.
"I wanted to know why that is," he said. "So I started doing some digging."
After reviewing garbage company contracts and reading through thousands of pages of records, Mahon came to the conclusion that post-collection sorting is rare in municipalities that contract waste management to a private third party. The reason, he said, is that sorting costs money. Most garbage companies own their own landfills, so it’s cheaper for them to dispose of garbage there without giving it a costly, second going-through.
"The bottom line is, we need to insist on more local control over waste sorting," he said. "We’re the ones generating the waste, so we need to be concerned with where it ends up. It’s our trash. We need to make sure it’s handled properly."
Mahon believes his appointment to StopWaste.org’s board will afford him the leverage he needs to really affect change. No longer just a squeaky wheel at meetings, he’ll now have the ear of local agencies and elected officials with the power to make things happen.
And his first order of business is putting pressure on the county to make recycling mandatory for commercial businesses and multi-occupant buildings, which includes apartment buildings and commercial buildings.
"I want these gaps closing," he said. "And I want to see some accountability, because there isn’t any now. I want to see accountability in auditing and contract management of solid waste. I’ve done my homework, and I know that’s what needs to happen."
Manufacturers typically wrap pallets in plastic (as shown) to make them easier and safer to move. In order to inspect the product or remove units, the film has to be cut off and thrown away because it’s not reusable. Then the pallet has to be rewrapped before it’s moved again. Jason Mahon has been trying for the last few years to convince companies to decrease waste by using a reusable wrap made by a firm he found in Canada.
