A
green consciousness burgeoned
in Oregon in the 1970s and
so did
new green businesses.
David
and Michela McMahon did not know at the outset that their
idealistic efforts in collecting recyclables would grow into
a major business.
The oral history of the
McMahons and Cloudburst, its evolution from community service
to a major operation, its reflection of the times, its impact
on their families, is told in the interviews. The book will
be published in 2009–2010.
Cloudburst Recycling, early 1970s
DAVID: Some people did know about recycling, which was sort
of a traditional venture from World War II, and there
were still paper drives from the Boy Scouts and other
groups in those days, but people’s idea of recycling
was that a volunteer organization could collect and sell
newspapers for the organization and raise money. But
our idea was that there had to be a fee so that we could
consistently collect materials, and we could collect
materials for recycling that didn’t have enough
value in their sale to warrant their collection. We could
collect things like tin cans and glass that really didn’t
bring much money, and if we charged a fee, and combined
it with what we could raise from the sale of the materials,
we could buy fuel for the vehicle, and eventually pay
a wage for a laborer to collect the materials. So it
could be self-supporting on a non-volunteer basis. So
it was a change in the way you looked at recycling, looking
at recycling as an alternative, really, to waste disposal.
There are better ways to handle waste. There are better
things we can do than just throw everything in a landfill
and pretend it’s going away. And so that was the
environmental consciousness together with the effort
to make it economically self-sustaining.
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