Return of Recycleman

Friday, June 13, 2003
By MARGARET ELLIS, Columbian staff writer

He fights apathy, ignorance and trash, and he does it all wearing a rubber kilt. He's Recycleman.  Well, actually, he's Pete DuBois, a mild-mannered Clark County public works employee.

DuBois' alter ego, Recycleman, visits area schools wielding a guitar and wearing a costume made of truck-tire tubes to instill a love of recycling in youngsters. To add volume to his message, Recycleman travels with a band, the Dumpster Divers.

Part of DuBois' job is educating the public about the importance of recycling and reducing waste. He has tailored his trash-talking show to middle schoolers, who he says don't hear as much about recycling as they did in elementary school.

DuBois concluded the Dumpster Divers' 2003 concert season last Friday with a performance at Discovery Middle School. Maybe it was the red cape, but kids were clapping along and straining to get their hands a little higher so they'd be called from the bleachers for the audience participation songs.

This year's tour was something of a comeback for DuBois. Recycleman was born about a  decade ago, when the county got an Environmental Protection Agency grant to make a video about recycling. Inspired by the video, DuBois started his educational tours. He dressed up in a plastic garbage bag decorated with trash.

"The costume was not cool. It even actually involved some blue tights," DuBois said. DuBois went on one school district tour, but hung up his tights after that.  "Recycleman was in retirement except for special sneak engagements," he said.

Hip new look

He resolved to bring Recycleman out of retirement when he found hundreds of plastic bottles during an audit of a middle school's trash. "We saw this huge need at the middle school where they were throwing away all these bottles," he said.

He put together a band, the Dumpster Divers, and he made over Recycleman to be less inspired by Hefty and more by "Mad Max." DuBois' rubber kilt is decorated with crushed pop cans. He also wears a red and white cape and a chest plate decorated with the universal symbol for recycling, a triangle made of arrows.

"The band was my idea," DuBois said. "I'm a musician, I play guitar and write songs. The songs I write, for one reason or another, are about trash." A few of his song titles include, "The Milk Jug Stomp," "Compost," and "Stinky, Stinky Landfill."

DuBois spends the vast majority of his time as a waste reduction specialist. He is paid his regular hourly wage by the county when he performs at local schools. When he goes on tour outside the county, sometimes traveling as far away as Salem, Ore., the band's fee is worked out with the school that invited him. The three Divers are paid $85 per gig by the county when performing locally. Dennis Tracy plays keyboard, Todd Aschoff, the drums and Chris Palmedo, the bass. DuBois doesn't do it for the glory or the cash.

After performing in Salem, DuBois learned that the school recycles Styrofoam plates used in the cafeteria, the same plates used by the Battle Ground School District. He made a few calls and is hoping to connect Battle Ground with a way to recycle plates too.

Out of costume, DuBois is soft-spoken and serious. He comes across like the kind of guy who would get nervous making toast, let alone singing in costume in front of hundreds of middle schoolers. But once he straps on the kilt and the cape and starts strumming his guitar, DuBois loses his shy veneer. DuBois' passion for fighting waste is just as strong, with or without the cape.

In addition to Recycleman, he works with local schools that have a curriculum devoted to environmental awareness called Earth Savers. For Earth Savers, he does a "dumpster dive," technically known as a garbage audit: sifting through trash and finding what people are throwing away instead of taking to the recycle bin.

Whether he appears as the enigmatic environmental hero Recycleman, or just hardworking Pete DuBois, his mission is the same. "The key piece is just to get the word out."