The last thing on any firefighter’s mind when confronted with a wildfire is whether the water bottles they need to stay hydrated end up getting recycled.
Now consider the hundreds of crew members working fires here in Oregon and you can imagine the insane amount of trash generated by fire camps. Fortunately, people who deal with fires in the Willamette National Forest decided there had to be a better way than garbage disposal, and they called in Triple Flare Recycling.
Triple Flare is a companion waste-management company to The Broomsmen. We created Triple Flare to serve government clients who need event cleanup but don’t want to see it all thrown in the landfill.
Why can’t the fire camp set out a recycling bin and call it a day? The waste stream is complicated! Not all recycling companies will take every type of plastic. If certain kinds of plastic, like shopping bags, gets mixed in with water bottles, all of it, including the valuable recyclable plastic, could end up in the landfill.
So Triple Flare is using its knowledge of proper waste disposal and the flow of people at events to collect recyclable material and make sure it goes to the right place. We’re gathering 10,000 water bottles a week from the Whitewater Fire so the Forest Service can redeem the Oregon 10-cent bottle deposit.