Friends of the environment

Reincarnated Recycling Services provides options to help people in Revelstoke be more earth-friendly

Lance Schultz and Angela Poole are the recycling team. — Photo courtesy Lance Schultz

Most people are looking for ways to do their part to reduce, reuse and recycle. Meet Lance Schultz and Angela Poole, two people who are going the extra step to reduce their own footprint and make it easier for anyone to recycle in Revelstoke.

Schultz and Poole moved from Vancouver to Revelstoke two years ago and started Reincarnated Recycling Services when they realized that there wasn’t curbside recycling available in their new community. Currently, Reincarnated Recycling Services offers curbside pickup of any recyclable materials, which Schultz and Poole load into their truck and take to the transfer station in Kamloops or Vernon. While this is not entirely economical at the moment, Poole said she is sure that in 10 years every community in B.C. will have mandatory curbside recycling and more transfer stations.

“(Soon everyone is) going to have mandatory curbside service,” said Poole, “and the recycling bins will all be bigger than the garbage bins and there will be compost bins too . . . We are just helping to implement it faster."

In April 2010, Reincarnated Recycling Services was the recipient of the North Columbia Environmental Society Green Business Award. The company is in the process of bidding on a contract to do curbside recycling for the City of Revelstoke, but for now it is working on expanding its private business. In addition, Poole and Schultz are promoting the refillable Soap Exchange component of their business.

Based on the knowledge that reusing is much better for the environment than recycling—as all recycled products are shipped overseas, processed and then shipped back to North America for one-time use—Reincarnated Recycling Services is selling laundry and dishwasher powder, general cleaner, dish soap and soap-scum dissolver. Customers can bring in their empty soap containers and have them refilled time and time again.

“Our all-purpose cleaner, which is made out of rinds and pits of grapefruit, lemon and lime, is a 500-millilitre bottle,” said Poole. “It is concentrated and smells wonderful. It makes 17 bottles of spray cleaner . . . that works out to 56 cents a bottle. If you went to a grocery store for a spray bottle of natural cleaner, you would be paying $4 to $6.”