Mast leads recycling efforts
By Scott Nicholson
nicholson@wataugademocrat.com

Mast General Store, built on a foundation of restoring an old enterprise, is also one of the local leaders in recycling.

The store chain, which grew out of a historic general store in the Valle Crucis community and now encompasses nine stores in the region, was one of the first local retail outlets to have its own cardboard compressor, which allowed packaging to be baled and picked up.

The store chain continued to expand its recycling as it found more uses for the packaging from products shipped to the stores by manufacturers.

“We’ve taken a step back and looked at what we could do to make ourselves a more sustainable organization,” said Mast’s public relations director Sheri Moretz. “We’re not there yet but we’re taking steps to do the right thing where we can.”

The chain has an employee group looking in-depth at the recycling program and examining which efforts yield the most positive benefits. That’s an on-going process, Moretz said, and could include actions like remodeling or replacing light fixtures as well as looking at the solid waste stream.

Mast General Store sorts recycling materials from its various locations and has a service that picks them up, though it ships its own cardboard.

“It’s a fiscal investment of not just dollars but staff time to make sure everything we recycle is sorted correctly,” Moretz said.

J.D. Dooley, who oversees the chain’s e-commerce wing, said when Mast began selling items over the Internet, it was already collecting the Styrofoam “peanuts” and bubble wrap and using it for the items they ship to customers. “We’re not buying any foam peanuts,” he said. “We’re getting as much as we need from the shipments we get from manufacturers. If we weren’t reusing it, we’d be throwing it out the back door and buying it through the front door.”

Dooley said the method has resulted in a low breakage rate. The store’s shipments are marked with a sticker that notifies customers about the recycling effort and explains why the packing material might be a mix of different materials.

“We started this when we started selling online six years ago,” Dooley said, noting the collected packing material from all the stores arrives in plastic trash bags that are themselves reused.

“We’re trying, in an organized way, to cut back on paper waste and reduce our carbon footprint,” Dooley said. “We have regular can and bottle collection in all the stores. I’m just really happy the packing material has balanced itself out into a steady flow.”

Dooley said if the e-commerce continues to grow, the store could begin accepting leftover Styrofoam from other businesses. Currently, several shipping businesses in the area accept unwanted foam, and Dooley said there were probably plenty of businesses that get more foam than they need.

“There’s no reason to throw any of that way,” he said. “I’m sure there’s someone who can use it.”

Moretz admits the store doesn’t have any shopping power to change packaging at the manufacturing level. Zero-waste proponents generally consider the front end of the waste stream important because it can be one of the more efficient ways to reduce the waste stream at the other end of the consumer chain. “It’s going to take a much larger effort than just us to make it happen,” she said.

Moretz said she hoped the store set an example for other businesses but also wanted to do the right thing. “We look at our waste production to see what we can keep out of the landfill and put back in the supply chain,” she said, mentioning local restaurants that compost their organic waste and pay attention to recycling cans and bottles. “Each industry has a responsibility to look at themselves to see what they can do to eliminate waste and make the whole business of doing business more sustainable.”

Mast even takes the step of collecting tissue paper used in wrapping some products. The paper is not accepted in Watauga County, but Mast collects it from its regional stores and ships it to a facility in Asheville that accepts the paper, using their regular truck routes in the process.

“We’re taking prudent steps to move forward and try to buy recycled paper, then recycle it and have the loop going around have,” Moretz said. “We’re not there yet. We’re taking baby steps.”