Section 1: Reducing Waste from Suppliers
Narrator
Cooperatively owned First Alternative Grocery in Corvallis is one of many firms that prefers reusable shipping containers to disposable ones.
Jonathan Carroll-First Alternative Grocery
We have a system with our local growers in the produce. They use reusable totes to deliver their produce here. We stock the produce…return the totes to the farmer. They fill it back up with produce and deliver it to us again thus completing the cycle. This is beneficial to the grower in that it cuts their costs down considerably. The average wax box runs between a dollar fifty and two bucks for the box. Some of these totes we've been using upwards to seven years. It saves a considerable amount of money.
Narrator
When they can't substitute reusable containers they try to get full use from the boxes they do receive.
Jonathan Carroll-First Alternative Grocery
A lot of this product we need to catalog and rather than going out and buying new bins to do that we reuse boxes that other product came in. It saves us on cost a lot. In fact a lot of the shelving and equipment here at First Alternative is bought second hand at auctions.
Narrator
Nypro Oregon in Corvallis produces injected plastic parts for the medical supply and printer industries. Replacing disposable cardboard shipping boxes with reusable containers helps keep their waste low and costs down.
John Wilson-Nypro Oregon
 These totes are brought into our tote room just back from being cleaned—washed , dried and ready to cycle back into our production area where they will be filled again with finished goods…brought out of the air lock…and placed on a pallet to ship to our customer. And then in turn from our customer's point will again go to be washed, dried and cycled back to us for their next use. At the end of their cycle as they start showing stress after five to six years the entire tote and lid are reground into little…minut…what we call regrind and sold to another vendor who reuses the same plastic to make another part.
Narrator
By rethinking its shipping needs Nypro Oregon was able to substitute a single strap for yards of shrink wrap.
John Wilson-Nypro Oregon
We've gotten away from using these stretch film that we used in the beginning to wrap the totes to the pallet. By going to a nylon strapping system which is the only thing that gets discarded when these are put into the production area of our customers. We no longer have to cut off all the plastic wrap…throw it in the dumpster…which is a total waste.
Narrator
Norm Thompson is a Portland-based retailer with extensive catalog operations. They reuse vendor wastes.
 Norm Thompson Shipping/Receiver Worker
We're in the shipping and receiving department of Norm Thompson Early Winters and Solutions where the vendors send their product in to be put in our catalog. We have the boxes that come in with item inside them wrapped nice and neat so they don't get broken. We have paper…then the item is actually wrapped in bubble wrap. And we have packaging peanuts in the bottom to protect it. All of these items are recycled and reused by us and other people in the area.
We'll bring'em over here. The paper goes into the round file. The bubble wrap goes in here. And then the packaging peanuts are dumped into a box with a plastic liner. And when it's full we remove that and we send this to a pottery shop in Portland Oregon where they send their pottery back out with the peanuts. The boxes are broken down and put into a container that's taken outside and the recycled. And we have the program where we actually take the item and send it back to the vendor using the same packaging materials that's left over…the paper mainly. We don't like to send this back. And the bubble wrap.. we send to the Epson company over here and they reuse it.
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