MARK BLOSSOM DECONSTRUCTS A MATTRESS IN
ONE OF ST. VINCENT DE PAUL'S MATTRESS
RECYCLING FACILITIES
What's the
Big Idea?
L
et’s produce ideas instead of timber.
That’s
something
FertiLab
Thinkubator mentor Shane Johnson says
could help transition Eugene and
Springfield
from
resource-based
communities to hubs of business and idea
production.
“There are a lot of people with ideas here,” Johnson
says. “Culturally, getting the momentum to grow beyond
Lane County is difficult. We’re an understated town, so
even though there’s success here, it’s not visible and there
aren’t a lot of models.”
Johnson envisions a Eugene where people can start a
business and thrive, where ideas flourish and have potential
to gain traction outside the county.
We’re not entirely there yet, but local business incubators
and accelerators are nourishing and encouraging ideas in all
stages of development, growing from within and spreading
outward. Eugene has its fair share of success stories — think
running shoes and a swoosh — but now it’s time to look
forward.
Johnson says Eugene and Springfield need more
diversity, greater hustle, interested investors and more
visible success stories for ideas to truly grow. “Midsized
cities that don’t transfer to a culture of entrepreneurship
will stagnate. We need a visible big win,” he says.
So check out these five success stories from Eugene and
the University of Oregon — all featured ideas started small,
then garnered attention on a national or international scale
— and remind yourself that Eugene does have a lot to be
proud of.
It turns out there’s money in old mattresses — metal,
wood and foam can all be salvaged — and St. Vincent de
Paul of Lane County, an affiliate of the National Council
of the U.S. Society of St. Vincent de Paul, is using that
money to help people. Now, other nonprofits around the
country want to learn how St. Vinnie’s does it.
Sue Palmer, a former reporter for The Register-Guard,
manages the Cascade Alliance, a program created by St.
Vincent de Paul of Lane County to help other nonprofits
pick up St. Vinnie’s knack for taking would-be trash out of
the waste stream, a process that includes harvesting old
mattresses, selling used books online and setting up
The Innovator
There’s a scene from “The Princess and the Pea”
unfolding in west Eugene. Stacks of mattresses in all
colors and shades take up ample floor space, forming a
sizeable pile. But the magic castle these mattresses are
stored in is St. Vincent de Paul of Lane County’s mattress
recycling facility. The facility processes at least 35,000
mattresses per year.
photos by todd cooper
SUE PALMER
AMAZING IDEAS SPRING
FROM EUGENE, AND WE
NEED MORE OF THEM
by Amy Schneider
P H OTO BY TOD D COO P E R
successful thrift stores. Palmer says Lane County’s St.
Vinnie’s created its business model out of necessity in the
1980s, when timber jobs disappeared.
“Terry McDonald, who’s been the executive director of
St. Vincent de Paul [of Lane County] for many years, saw
this great need in the community for affordable housing,
low-cost goods and emergency services,” Palmer says.
“Everybody here rolled up their sleeves and said, ‘What
can we do?’”
And so they entered the waste stream, literally. St.
Vincent de Paul sent trailers to transfer sites and intercepted
people on their way to landfills, asking for their furniture,
clothes and mattresses.
“There are lots of nonprofits that tap donations to fund
their stores, but we added that extra level of tapping those
waste facilities as well,” Palmer says, adding that St.
Vincent de Paul of Lane County has trailers at transfer
sites ranging from Portland to San Jose, California. The
nonprofit uses funds from these acquisitions to help more
than 84,000 people every year by providing support
services for veteran families, affordable housing and safe
spaces for families in crisis.
It’s easy to see why a nonprofit might want to engage
in this business, but how? That’s a question that Palmer
and the Cascade Alliance help to answer.
With assistance from a $2.1 million grant from the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Cascade Alliance
has helped a handful of nonprofits — United Teen Equality
Center in Massachusetts, Greater Bridgeport Community
Enterprises in Connecticut and The Mustard Seed of
Central Florida in Orlando — to set up mattress recycling
facilities of their own.
Not every area of the country is suitable for mattress
recycling, Palmer says. Lane County wants to keep its
landfill accepting waste as long as possible, she explains,
and mattresses cause problems for trash compaction when
they defy compression with their springy nature. The
county pays St. Vinnie’s $6 per mattress to pick the
mattresses up and keep them out of the waste stream, and
it’s this "tipping fee" that makes the whole mattress
recycling operation viable.
eugeneweekly.com • A ugust 13, 2015
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