Much Ado About Mulching
Dealer’s cast-offs improve environment, community
Aqua, November 2004
These days, most products are shipped in cardboard boxes. Once companies remove the cardboard, some sell it to a recycler. Olympic Hot Tub Company, based in Seattle, has found an imaginative way to use its cardboard remnants to help save the environment and its community.
Three years ago, says co-owner Alice Cunningham, Olympic decided to donate its leftover cardboard pieces to EarthCorps, an urban conservation organization in the Seattle area that provides high-quality, cost-efficient environmental restoration services while creating opportunities for young adults aged 18 to 25 to learn the fundamentals of environmental restoration and community development.
The organization takes these cardboard pieces - nearly 144 tons a year, or 122,000 square feet (three-quarters of which is donated by Olympic) - and uses it to remove invasive plants, such as blackberry, through sheet mulching, says Liz Stenning, field operations director for EarthCorps.
According to Stenning, the organization works mainly in public parks, restoring streams and trails and planting native plants. Removing invasive plants without herbicides can be quite difficult, however. “We’re removing everything by hand, so it takes a long time to remove all the roots,” Stenning says. To cut down on manual labor, the group turns to cardboard.
“We put down big sheets of cardboard (after removing any leftover staples and tape) and then put down approximately 4 to 6 inches of bark or wood chips on top,” says Stenning. “What happens is whatever is underneath the cardboard, like weeds, will die, and eventually that cardboard will break down and the wood chips or bark will incorporate into the soil. But in the short term, you can plant through that cardboard.”
Because so many companies sell their large sheets of cardboard to recyclers, Stenning says the organization was having a hard time finding the needed materials. (Much of the groups’ other supplies, such as the wood chips or bark, comes from community donations.)
“You would think it would be really easy to find cardboard, but it’s really kind of challenging,” she says. “It’s so nice to know we can just go [to Olympic] anytime and get it. We put on a lot of volunteer events with kids and adults, and we do planting projects and restoration in inner city neighborhoods, and I would say a lot of what we do is bringing people together in the community to try to restore a particular park or space. Without those materials, it would be much more expensive - or we just wouldn’t do it.”
Cunningham agrees: “It’s a win-win for us and the community. We are so pleased to be able to find a useful home for the cardboard.”
To learn more about EarthCorps, visit earthcorps.org.
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