Key West’s Harpoon Harry’s leads the way into recycling future

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

Sometimes people have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future. But at Harpoon Harry’s, the popular 26-year-old restaurant at 832 Caroline St., turning to recycling was a no-brainer.

Ron Heck, Harry’s owner and manager, was approached by Waste Management, the city’s contracted trash hauler, two years ago and asked whether he wanted to participate in a pilot program to recycle as much of the restaurant’s material as possible. Harry’s gets two deliveries a day, including eight trucks worth of food products each week. That adds up to a lot of cardboard delivery boxes, metal cans, glass liquor bottles; all material that because Key West does not require mandatory business recycling, was going straight into the trash. Heck was initially concerned, wondering how hard it would be to train his staff to separate recyclable material from trash and begin putting it into designated bins. Other business owners also worry about the cost to recycle and whether adding recycling bins to commercial trash areas would require more space in a severely space-constrained town.

But Heck was more than pleasantly surprised. First of all, he said it took his staff about two days to work out the process to separate recyclables. Each staff member disposes of recycles into designated 55-gallon plastic bins. Two staff members are tasked with regularly emptying those bins into a larger recycling area. But the number of bins has remained the same, Heck said. Before recycling, Harpoon Harry’s used six 55-gallon trash bins a day. Today, that count remains at six, only four of them are for recycling and two for trash.

“And sometimes we don’t even fill up one,” he said about the two remaining trash bins, which are used primarily for food scraps.

As for the cost, Heck used to pay Waste Management about $650 a month for trash pick-up. His bill is now $350 a month because it costs Waste Management less to haul recyclable material than trash. Trash is normally taken to a burn disposal facility which charges haulers by weight to handle the material. Recyclables go to a different facility where it costs less per pound because the material can be sold to manufacturers and reused.

“Our recycle bill is a fraction of our trash bill,” Heck said. “We’re saving $300 a month easily. That’s over $3,000 a year.”

Plus, it’s just the right thing to do, helping the ecologically-sensitive Florida Keys. Heck said 10-12 percent of Harpoon Harry’s business is take-out. Today, those meals are put into non-recyclable Styrofoam with equally non-recyclable plastic utensils. But Heck said that starting around Dec. 1, he is switching to cardboard takeout containers and wooden utensils that are stronger but cost the same as plastic.

“We’re ready to switch over,” he said. “We’ve been on this corner for 26 years. We’re really excited about the changes.”

[livemarket market_name="KONK Life LiveMarket" limit=3 category=“” show_signup=0 show_more=0]