The History of Methow Recycles
The Methow Valley has a rich history of values rooted in conservation, community, and resilience. From the first people of the Methow tribe to call this valley home to the first white settlers who arrived in the early 1800s, people have been surviving in this remote mountain range and learning to match their needs with what the land, the river, and their two hands can provide.
Photos courtesy of the Schafer museum
While life in the Methow is much simpler nowadays, the values of thrift, stewardship, and make-do were passed on from those early inhabitants. They never really went away. Neighbors always helped neighbors get what they need. In the WWII era, the community’s first metal drive was organized at the Twisp Grange to help with the war effort. Decades later in 1998, a handful of residents organized a metal drive to gauge community interest and drum up support for a more formal system of recycling in the valley. The metal drive was so successful and the response so overwhelmingly positive that it prompted the group to ask— what would a successful recycling program look like in our rural, remote community?
To help answer that question, a grant from USDA Rural Development, administered through our local ranger district, funded a feasibility study that determined a self-haul community recycling center is in fact possible in the Methow Valley and gave direction about how to go about creating one. Over the next three years, through a series of community fundraisers, generous donations and grants from the Department of Ecology and Community Foundation of North Central Washington, and over 600 individuals and private foundations, coupled with incredible organizational support from the Okanogan County Electric Co-op, Methow Conservancy, Town of Twisp, and Okanogan County Public Works, a recycling center was born. True to the can-do spirit of the Methow Valley, all of the fundraising, program design, and most of the construction was completed by skilled volunteers committed to the cause. Electricians, plumbers, contractors volunteered their time together to make the recycling center a reality. Building Methow Recycles truly was a community effort!
The building was completed in late 2001, with the baler (that’s still in operation to this day!) arriving in a snowstorm in December. A generous local logging company expertly maneuvered their crane to hoist the baler off of the truck and onto the warehouse floor.
Our beginnings were humble. For years, the recycling center was run by our Executive Director Betsy Cushman and two very part-time employees. Beyond that, we relied entirely on volunteer support. We baled aluminum and tin, cardboard, office paper, magazines, newspaper, and two types of plastic bottles.
One commodity our community really wanted to recycle was glass. When we first opened, we had no way to get it recycled or reused. So we got creative, bought a glass crusher in 2004 and teamed up with another local non-profit to provide them with crushed glass (a sand-like material) to use for trail building. In 2016, through yet another partnership with a local concrete company, we were finally able to haul glass to Seattle where it is recycled into fiberglass insulation and new bottles.
Another key moment in our story came about from the creation of a business that would prove to be a vital partnership and an important step in growing recycling in the Methow Valley. When Casey Bouchard moved to the valley in 2005 he wondered at the lack of recycling collection service and whether that represented a potential opportunity. After a few years of planning and some mentoring from Betsy, Recycling Round Up was launched.
In the beginning, it was a grassroots effort where recyclables were “rounded up” on bike trailers and old trucks. The focus was on collecting recycling from businesses but as word spread over the next year or two, demand for the service increased exponentially. Coincidentally, around the same time that Recycling Round Up was looking to grow, the valley’s garbage service Methow Valley Sanitation was coming up for sale.
In 2013, Recycling Round Up blossomed into WasteWise Methow, complete with a line of large compactor trucks, offering both garbage and recycling collection service to the community. A service of this scale is entirely unique in rural areas. It makes doing the right thing with waste easier and more convenient which encourages more people to participate. Recycling as an ethic would not have become as embedded as it is in our valley way of life without a conscious waste hauler. It is a vital piece of the goal to maximize diversion from our landfill.
In 2018, we dug deeper into emphasizing waste prevention with the launch of three new programs: the Repair Café, Share Library, and the ReMake Center. These programs allow the community more options to further reduce landfill-bound waste by first fixing items, or donating them for reuse.
Our founding director moved on in 2021. Now with a strong staff of eight, Methow Recycles has grown over the last two decades. We owe our continued success entirely to our incredibly dedicated community who ensures that recycling and reducing waste remain a core part of what we value about life in the Methow Valley.
