Pale Blue Plastics
A lot of restaurants pivoted a bit during the first year of the pandemic. The Loaded Bowl took a hard left and never looked back. They permanently switched to a take-out model, converted their dining room to a kitchen, and turned their catering kitchen into a plastics recycling facility.
While the rest of us were tinkering with sourdough, Loaded Bowl owner Jon Grupe was teaching himself how to give new life to shopping bags, Styrofoam containers, and all of the other persona non grata of the plastics community, recycling classifications 2, 4, 5 and 6 to be specific.
“I bought my first drill when we were putting up the walls in our Loaded Bowl food truck,” says Jon, who co-owns both businesses with his wife, Tevin. “I realized after running a restaurant that building things was a lot more fulfilling to me than making food.”
Now two years in, Pale Blue Plastics’ staff of seven has a giant workshop full of every machine imaginable for shredding, melting, molding, pressing, and cutting. Some of their machines are for building other machines because the equipment they need doesn’t exist yet.
The connecting thread between Pale Blue Plastics and The Loaded Bowl is Jon’s passion for sustainability. He likes to think big.
“I could preach to people about the benefits of being vegan, or I could just give them good vegan food,” he explains. “And if someone has the choice between buying something made out of virgin plastics or something recycled, then why not?”
His ultimate goal is to create products that are functional, sustainable, and beautiful — their recycling process retains the colors of the original materials, resulting in swirling, brightly speckled sheets of plastic that could become countertops, planters, speakers, or even framed art.
Their recycling services are only open to select businesses at the moment: to get in on the magic, visit paleblueplastics.com and send them a message.
