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As consumers, we’re a spoiled bunch. Our purchasing power is prolific, and we often don’t consider our personal accountability for what we buy in terms of end-waste. We want our recycling to be curbside, and whatever can’t be picked up, we want to toss.

But that’s exactly the attitude that Kevin Chafin, Community Recycling Center coordinator for Kansas City’s Bridging the Gap (BTG) wants to change. “There is no throw ‘away,’” he contends. “Things aren’t ‘waste’ just because we’re done with them.” Kevin wants us to treat our trash — everything from food scraps, glass and paper to household items and electronics — as valuable resources that can be put back into circulation in some way, shape or form.

When it comes to the issue of convenient one-stop recycling, Kevin points out that we don’t shop at one location for items to furnish our homes, food to stock our refrigerators, clothes for our closets or greenery to landscape our yards. “We visit multiple stores every day to outfit our lives,” he says, thus we might have to visit multiple places to remove those used items from our lives. He’s becoming more adamant that citizens not regard curbside pickup as the only source of waste collection.

There are little ways all of us can make that proverbial, grassroots difference, including toting our own coffee mug to work, holding a garage sale and even   sharing magazines. “We like to say, ‘if   you can’t reduce or reuse it, chances are you can recycle it,’” Kevin says. Other ideas are available at BTG’s user-friendly website, www.bridgingthegap.org, which offers a compendium of valuable resources to consumers, from help locating recycling centers to a glossary of common items that are accepted and how to prepare them for recycling. Items from A to T (aluminum foil to toner cartridges) are   listed, with an easy-to-follow legend on where particular materials are taken. The site also helps consumers navigate the sometimes tricky questions like where to take tires, hazardous household chemicals and solvents, and electronics and has links to other waste-reduction services in the area. It even suggests ways to reduce the proliferation of junk mail.

Kevin believes successful recycling of our resources starts with one person waving the banner in his or her neighborhood or workplace to influence personal “throw-away” decisions and to raise awareness of the importance of conscientious recycling.

Take K.O. Strohbehn, for example. A regular patron at Dean & Deluca in Leawood for years, she enjoyed the gourmet emporium’s prepared foods and other products, but the “throw-away” factor of all those used containers concerned her. One of her favorite statistics to illustrate the power of recycling is the glass bottle. “Recycling just one bottle saves enough energy to light a 100-watt light bulb for four hours,” she says. “Glass is 100-percent recyclable.”

A veteran recycler, K.O. decided to approach Dean & Deluca’s general manager, Josh Hodapp, about spearheading an eco-friendly store program. He liked her enthusiasm and gave her carte blanche to set up a system not only for store waste but also for customers to recycle in the store.

A year after its inception, Project Green & Deluca has significantly pared its trash pile, in large part to K.O.’s efforts. “To keep entire bins from being rejected by our recycling service, the glass is sorted by hand,” she says. In addition, Dean & Deluca is committed to reusing and recycling everything it can, including aluminum cans, paper and even coffee grounds. 

The store has three bins strategically positioned on the sales floor for shoppers to drop their glass and other recyclables. “They fill up almost daily,” says a proud K.O. She also helped institute a BYOB (Bring Your Own Bag) program for customers. “People can bring in their own market bag, paper bag or Dean & Deluca bag, complete a form and be entered into a monthly $25 gift-certificate drawing,” she says.

“We definitely anticipate the day when our area offers a comprehensive recycling program,” K.O. comments, “but until then, it’s an individual’s responsibility to be a good steward of resources and tend to their little corner of the Earth.”