Feature Story

By Amanda Hardy

Lagniappe intern

Heaps of paper, glass, plastic and aluminum in landfills reaching higher than the RSA tower, millions of Styrofoam take out containers forming one horrifying monster who haunts the earth for an entire millennia before it biodegrades: these are the images in the nightmares of environmental crusaders around the world.

Many feel the environment is being mindlessly destroyed everyday, even here in Mobile, but there are a few people who are taking up the battle to make our planet and city beautiful again.

One such person is Sallye Irvine. This Mobile resident, mother of four, wife of George Irvine and food and wine writer at first seems like an ordinary, although somewhat quirky woman, but she is also a zealous earth-conscious activist. Irvine is involved in many different activities to save the environment in the community and in her personal live.

“I sit on a couple of boards because I am full of opinions, whether that’s good or bad. I’m on the Urban Forestry Committee of Keep Mobile Beautiful,” Irvine elaborates. “I want to start something through Keep Mobile Beautiful called ‘The Litter League.’ What I ultimately would like to do is pick up trash in various neighborhoods once a month, and have people in that neighborhood be able to come and join us,” she adds.

Irvine is already implementing this ideal in her own life. “I’m a crazy trash picker-upper; my friends call me ‘the trash lady’ because I like to pick up trash. I have my own special trash tongs and all my children have trash sticks, and we pick up trash; that’s what I do for fun.

“I’ve picked up trash on every beach in the world: in Hawaii, Mexico and Italy. When I go to a beach, I take a long walk down the beach, and I view all the trash. I just carry a little bag tucked in my bathing suit, and I walk back and pick up trash. There’s so many plastic bags floating around in the world, by the time I’ve filled up my one big bag of trash, lo and behold, there’s another plastic bag washed up onto the beach.

“I like to pick up litter because then I feel like the world is a more beautiful place after I’ve left it,” Irvine explains.

Irvine is also involved in a business endeavor to spread her message of earth-consciousness.

“I am co-empress of Earth Chic Bag Company where we make fashionable tote bags out of 100 percent post-consumer recycled plastic bottles,” she says.

“I have always been a canvas bag toter, and I thought a couple of years ago when I was walking along in Bruno’s that nobody else was going to do this because it looks hippie and frumpy, and only the really truly die-hard environmentalists are going to take their bunch of dirty canvas bags to the grocery store. I thought maybe if I make it sheik and stylish then I can get everybody to do it.”

Environmentalism is not a newly developed concern of Irvine. Her desire to protect the Earth has fueled her since she was a small child.

“Well when I was little, there was a TV commercial with an Indian crying over the polluted river. The Indian would paddle down the river, and there was all this trash. At the end of the commercial a single tear rolled down the Indian’s face,” Irvine recalls. “Well, this did something completely weird to me that it didn’t to anybody else. This had a gigantic influence on the entire rest of my life, and I immediately became sensitive to trash picking up. I tried to get my friends and neighbors to pick up trash in New Orleans, and I was always instituting trash picking up.”

Not only did Irvine begin thinking about saving the environment as a spunky little girl; she also began to act on her idealist mindset.

“When I was nine I wrote a letter to Governor Edwards in Louisiana about the trash situation. Back then I was so naive I thought the entire environmental problem could be solved if people just wouldn’t litter. My idea was to compact trash and make it into bricks and build beautiful houses, not realizing this would cause a whole other set of environmental issues,” she says.

When Irvine moved from New Orleans to Mobile after marrying her husband George, she focused her earth-conscious energy into impacting the city. She started with an organization known for making a difference in the community, the Junior League.

“When I came to Mobile, I became the recycling chairman for the Junior League. I would haul the Junior League’s trash in the trunk of my red BMW to various places and recycle it, which made my husband crazy. About that time I started using Earth Resources, the private recycler, because George was not very happy that I was hauling all that trash around, which I still do,” Irvine admits.

Irvine also encourages other business, organizations and individuals to recycle. She often helps others to recycle by commandeering their recyclable trash.

“I used to pick up all of Carpe Diem’s milk jugs. It’s hard for me to throw things away. I’m very big on reusing, reducing, and I actually will sometimes take recycling home from other people’s parties,” she elaborates.

Although most people deem recycling as a tedious, time-consuming activity, Irvine has many tips to aid in changing an environmentally ignorant lifestyle into easy, earth-savvy habits.

One obscure helpful hint is to use cloth diapers instead of disposable diapers. Irvine comments, “People have those diaper genies, and they put diapers in them and terminally seal up these sausage links of diapers, which won’t biodegrade for millions of years, not to mention I’ve probably saved enough money to put one of my children through college by using cloth diapers.”

Whether to recycle paper, plastic, tin, aluminum, and glass has never been a question for Irvine.

“I will choose the generic ketchup that’s a one or two over the ketchup that’s in a bottle that’s a five or a seven that absolutely cannot be recycled. Cans are a given; you just have to recycle your cans. Glass is easily recyclable. You have to pick the things that are the easiest to recycle,” she explains.

Irvine is passionate about numerous recycling tips. The prevalence of Styrofoam, however, sends this towheaded tree-hugger through the roof.

“People cannot take all this Styrofoam. No Styrofoam plates, no Styrofoam cups, and no Styrofoam take-out boxes if we can help it. It’s much better to take foil and get a foil swan like in the ‘80s. Now everybody gets a nasty Styrofoam box. Styrofoam never biodegrades, never ever. You might as well take your leftovers home on a glass plate, because the plate will recycle faster than the Styrofoam,” Irvine claims.

Irvine’s influence has a dynamic impact on the city of Mobile. She is not alone in her pursuit of a healthy environment, though. Other organizations throughout the city are tackling the issue of litter and recycling more aggressively.

Mayor Sam Jones is making litter-related offences a new focus for the Mobile Police Department. They now have an employee working exclusively on the issue of dumping on vacant lots, and motorcycle officers now patrol for people littering from their cars.

Jones also has plans to relieve the city of litter by means of a capitol project. “We have ordered some trash containers to go throughout the city, all over the city,” Jones states in a previously published interview with Lagniappe.

“What we want to do is get those trash containers out because we don’t want anybody to say, ‘Well, there wasn’t anywhere for me to put [trash],’ so we’re doing that also.”

Keep Mobile Beautiful also has new plans to combat excessive waste. They have partnered with Earth Resources and have started a pilot curbside paper recycling program in the Springhill and Crestview areas.

Keep Mobile Beautiful’s literature explains, “Paper makes up about 25 percent of our household garbage. By recycling this amount of paper we will greatly reduce the amount of garbage sent to the landfill and save valuable tax dollars spent to bury that garbage.”

They are also partnering with Mobile Water and Sewer to start a cooking oil and grease recycling service. Recycling is an easy way to make a tremendous impact on the environment. Although it is not a prevalent practice in Mobile yet, each person who participates makes a significant difference.

“My husband used to say, ‘You can’t change the Earth all by yourself,’ but it’s like the story about the man walking on the beach. There are all these washed up starfish on the beach, and everybody says, ‘You can’t save them all,’ but he throws one back and says, ‘I made a difference to that one,’” Irvine said. “If everybody did their own little part, it would have a dramatic impact. When you start recycling you see how very much trash you don’t put out, you are just so astounded that you cannot go back to it.”

Amanda Hardy is an intern for Lagniappe. E-mail her at editor@lagniappemobile.com

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