Imagine my surprise when my Google alerts turned up a new Sandbar story online- and one that featured a semi-interview with Joe.
"Oh no," I said out loud, imagining all the possible things that Joe could have "factored" to a reporter.
The article, courtesy of the campus newspaper was about local bars and their efforts to be more "green," or for those of you who think I'm talking about our lovely lime facade, more environmentally friendly.
I was going to write about this earlier in the month, when another article appeared in the UDK that talked about a new student group that had formed on campus. Students for Bar Recycling aims to, well, encourage local bars to recycle.
After I saw the first article, I asked Dave if the group had contacted him (they haven't) and what he thought about their plan. The Sandbar already recycles cardboard, mainly because the city provides a dumpster for cardboard in the alley right beside the regular trash dumpster. It's easy enough to separate the cardboard from the trash.
However, Dave said it would be a lot harder to try to recycle glass. The Sandbar is small. We don't have room to store bags or bins full of glass and wait for a curbside recycling service to pick them up a few times a week.
We also don't have space to add recycling bins for glass around the bar. And it would be extremely difficult to keep glass bottles separated from all the other trash- plastic cups, straws, napkins- that accumulates in the bar anyway. Even if we did have space for extra bins, do you think most customers would pay attention to what bin they were supposed to put their cup or bottle in? I doubt it- and then the staff would be stuck sorting trash all night.
Dave thought the best hope for more recycling- at least for downtown bars- would be if the city or a private company added glass recycling bins near the existing dumpsters. He would make an effort to recycle the empty liquor bottles; since those are kept behind the bar, it would be fairly easy to keep them separate from the trash and then they could be delivered to the bin outside with the trash and the cardboard.
But back to Joe. He did a fine job answering the reporter's questions about The Sandbar's recycling habits, and even remembered to mention our energy efficient air circulation system.
