A SLICK APPROACH TO ENVIRONMENTALISM : Many businesses say they are recycling at least part of their waste, but others find that old habits are hard to break.

A lunch patron at a downtown Ventura sandwich shop was disappointed recently to learn that the store’s tuna isn’t a dolphin-safe brand. Disappointment turned to dismay when the shop owner revealed that he is a marine biologist well aware of the fatal hazard that drift nets, used by many tuna fishing boats, pose to dolphins and other sea life.

“I would think,” stammered the customer, “you’d be more concerned about this issue.”

The proprietor shrugged. “I use Styrofoam too,” he said, confessing to another environmental offense. “I don’t feel good about it, but I’m trying to run a business.”

The scope and mood of April’s Earth Day celebration seemed to suggest that after more than two decades, the environmental movement had finally turned the corner. Environmental awareness had insinuated itself into the American psyche. Being green was mainstream.

That, at least, was the perception. But many environmentalists were demoralized by California voters’ decisive defeat of the most ambitious environmental propositions on the November ballot. (In Ventura County, the opposition to the Big Green and Forests Forever initiatives was proportionately greater than it was statewide.) If environmental reform hasn’t even managed to penetrate the local sandwich shop, is the environmental movement more rhetoric than reality?

The Times recently surveyed a variety of Ventura County companies to learn what, if anything, they are doing to reduce their environmental impact.

“I think we all have to do whatever we can,” said Kris Pustina, co-owner of Franky’s restaurant in Ventura. The challenge, she added, is “trying to find ways to do what you can and still stay in business.” You won’t find Styrofoam at Franky’s and, for a while, Pustina took tuna off the menu and offered pilchard instead. Now she serves dolphin-safe tuna (line-caught rather than netted) that she said costs her twice as much as she used to pay.

Ed Warren serves dolphin-safe tuna at his Busy Bee Cafe in Ventura--at least it says dolphin safe on the can--but he admits that he has made few other concessions to environmental protection. His paper supplies are made of virgin fiber, and he still uses plastic foam cups and containers. “I suppose we should look more into alternatives,” Warren said. “But you get set in your ways and you fall into patterns, and you think, ‘Oh well. . . .’ ”

Gerald A. Scott, owner and president of Canteen of Coastal California, which operates catering trucks and industrial cafeterias in the area, reacted similarly when asked if he has looked into using recycled materials. “I don’t have time for these kinds of things,” he said.

Patagonia Inc., the Ventura outdoor clothing company, analyzed its waste and determined that well over half of its trash is paper. “We don’t make anything,” Public Affairs Director Kevin Sweeney said. (Patagonia designs and distributes its garments but contracts other firms to do the manufacturing.)

“We do as much polluting as a law firm,” Sweeney said.

Patagonia has made a point of finding and buying recycled paper for its copying machines. In contrast, Nordman, Cormany, Hair & Compton, the county’s largest law firm with some 70 employees, has never considered using anything but virgin paper. “Nobody’s ever approached me and said that there is a certified recycled photocopy paper,” said Kent Davis, the firm’s administrative officer.

Patagonia uses recycled paper for its letterhead stationery. Nordman, Cormany, Hair & Compton does not. “Law firms can’t do that,” Davis said. “The recycled paper just isn’t high enough quality.”

At the urging of several employees, Bank of A. Levy’s corporate headquarters in Ventura recently began recycling most of its considerable output of wastepaper. Most of the paper it buys, however, is virgin. But apparently that is going to change. Recycling firms, bank Vice President Jack Nelson said, “are having a lot of cooperation with getting people to recycle paper, but then there’s no demand for recycled paper. So we are going to be requesting of our vendors that they make recycled paper available to us.”

Asked if the bank, in deciding where to put its money, weighs environmental factors along with the usual financial criteria, Nelson said: “I really don’t think that plays a part in our investment decisions.”

Procter & Gamble recently announced an investment decision of its own. In October, the company said it is making available $20 million in grants to communities interested in constructing large-scale composting centers like one that P&G; helped develop in St. Paul, Minn. About 50% to 70% of America’s municipal garbage--notably food, wood, paper and yard wastes--can be composted into humus for soil enrichment.

P&G; has drawn heavy criticism from environmentalists for manufacturing disposable diapers, but the company’s Oxnard plant produces only Charmin toilet paper and Bounty paper towels. The manufacture of both products results in a wood pulp byproduct called “fines.” Three years ago, the plant annually sent 3,000 tons of fines to a landfill. Today, most of that waste goes instead to makers of soil amendments.

“In our position,” P&G; Oxnard spokesman Bob Paulger said, “it’s not just a perception, it’s a reality that the world is much more concerned about the environment today than it was a few years ago. And if a company’s going to be successful, it certainly needs to be not in the position of just meeting environmental constraints, but of seeing the environment as something that we need to take the lead in protecting.”

At its Oxnard site, P&G; uses cardboard shipping boxes composed of 80% recycled fiber. But the products inside those boxes, Charmin and Bounty, are made of 100% virgin paper. P&G; has no plans to change that. “We just don’t know how to get the same kind of capacity out of a recycled fiber today,” Paulger said.

Most of the companies The Times contacted are recycling at least some of their wastes. Procter & Gamble claims an 88% reduction in landfill waste.

Northrop Corp.’s Newbury Park plant, scheduled to close by 1991 in a corporate cost-cutting measure, claims a 90% reduction since 1985 in the material it sends to landfills. Jet fuel, cleaning solvents, machine oils, empty drums, computer paper, white bond paper and aluminum cans are all recycled. Not only does this result in lower waste fees and taxes, Northrop’s corporate spokesman Mike Greywitt said, “it also minimizes our long-term liability in terms of not being involved in Superfund sites or landfill litigation down the road.”

The recent decision by McDonald’s hamburger chain to phase out polystyrene packaging apparently does not interfere with the company’s “McRecycle” campaign, which seeks to recycle 70% of each restaurant’s wastes. Clay Paschen, who owns six McDonald’s franchises in Ventura County and will soon open two more in Camarillo, hopes to implement the recycling program at his stores by the first of the year.

“I think all of us in society, including myself, are looking for constant improvements,” Paschen said. “It’s a focal point now. I think we’re putting self-imposed pressures--at least, I am on myself--to see what we can do to be good citizens.”

Nowhere is the self-imposed pressure to be good citizens more pronounced than at Patagonia. Yvon Chouinard’s company has garnered a reputation for environmental advocacy that, in the eyes of any self-respecting chamber of commerce, is nothing less than radical. But radical today may be commonplace tomorrow: If the Earth’s environmental problems are nearly as serious as a growing chorus of scientists contends, Patagonia’s green ethic could be a business bellwether.

Patagonia’s bankrolling of scores of environmental groups--from Goliaths such as the Audubon Society to extremists such as Earth First!--is arguably one of the less remarkable aspects of the company’s near obsession with environmental responsibility and corporate rectitude. After all, a lot of corporations, enticed by tax incentives, give away money.

But few companies suggest to their customers, as Patagonia will in its spring ’91 catalogue (printed on recycled paper), that runaway consumerism is the scourge of the Earth’s environment and that people need to confront their consumptive habits. “As individuals,” Public Affairs Director Kevin Sweeney said, “we need to consume less.”

Last spring, Patagonia initiated what it calls a “continuing environmental quality review,” a white-glove and magnifying-glass analysis of every facet of the company’s operation. The overriding question that the corporation is asking itself is: How can we minimize our impact on the environment? Raw materials, fabrications, dyes, packaging, transportation. . . .

Very little is escaping Patagonia’s attention as the company attempts to evaluate the environmental costs that its products incur from cradle to grave.

“Our hands aren’t clean,” said Sweeney, citing Patagonia’s oil-based synthetic fabrics, Synchilla and Capilene. “We extract petroleum out of the ground--indirectly.” The company may explore the possibility of making Synchilla from recycled motor oil. That would be a wonderful paradox: The stuff that cools your car’s engine could later warm your body.

In any case, Sweeney points out, Patagonia’s well-constructed synthetic garments tend to last much longer than most natural-fiber clothing, a distinct environmental virtue.

“Nothing we sell has no environmental impact, even a 100% cotton shirt,” Sweeney said. “It may, in fact, be the worst thing we sell,” given that cotton farming typically requires enormous amounts of water, pesticides, defoliants for harvesting and formaldehyde in the spinning process. “We’re going to try to find ethical, or better, sources of cotton.”

Patagonia’s environmental review won’t be limited to its in-house operations. The corporation also wants to examine the practices of its suppliers and manufacturers, domestic and foreign. “We design stuff; we don’t make it,” Sweeney said. “So what we are trying to do is apply a standard to everybody with whom we do business. We’re essentially trying to be like the ethical consumer who walks through the supermarket and tries to make sure that the products he or she buys meet certain standards. So we will go to Malden Mills in Massachusetts and say, ‘How can you let us come into your plant and . . . open up the process so we can see what’s happening? Let’s work together on improving the process.’ ”

Not that any of this is easy. With no models to follow, Patagonia freely admits that it is grappling with the complexity and uncertainties of the task. “I don’t want to imply in any way that we have had successes or that we’re good at this,” Sweeney cautioned. “We are groping. . . .”

Patagonia excels, however, in white-collar environmental basics. The company buys recycled paper for its copy machines, computer printers, stationery and toilet supplies, paying more than for virgin paper if necessary. When the price of recycled copier paper inexplicably rose by 30% for a while, the company temporarily returned to virgin paper but insisted that the fiber come from timber plantations, not old-growth forests.

At Patagonia, virtually anything that can be recycled is recycled, including the profits from recycling, which are invested in employee barbecues. “Sustainable” has become a company watchword. “Disposable” is considered foul language. Plastic ribbon cartridges for typewriters and printers are sent out to be reloaded instead of discarded. Ballpoint pens are being phased out in favor of refillable ones. Most of the restroom towels are cloth instead of paper. The company’s child-care center furnishes cloth diapers only. The cafeteria eschews plastic foam, paper plates, plastic utensils and tuna that isn’t dolphin-safe. Food and yard wastes end up in on-site composers.

“It’s corporate culture,” said Environmental Resources Coordinator Tim Sweeney of Lost Arrow Corp., Patagonia’s parent company. “Telling people ‘You’re going to sort your trash because it’s the right thing to do’ is acceptable here. The CEO of this company makes a lot more than I do, but he sorts his own trash.”

With increasing frequency, Patagonia is getting calls and visits from other corporations interested in following the clothing company’s example. “We’re more than happy to share what we’ve learned with other companies,” Tim Sweeney said.

Such altruism doesn’t always flourish in the world of big business. Bill Crew, owner of nine Burger King franchises, including all three in the city of Ventura, said he has been working with Burger King executives on ways to lessen the fast-food chain’s environmental impact. What measures are in the works? “Unfortunately,” Crew said, “I am under some confidentiality restrictions and can’t talk about them.” Bear in mind, he added, this is “competitive information.”

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