Reduce, reuse, revolutionize

John Muir. Aldo Leopold. Gaylord Nelson.  When it comes to environmental leaders, Wisconsin can drop some names.

But chances are you haven’t heard of Milly Zantow.

“I see Milly as really one of the unsung environmental heroes of Wisconsin,” says Gregg Mitman, director of the Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies at UW-Madison.

Zantow, 87, isn’t an ecologist, a politician or a professor of environmental studies. She has no background in public policy or science. But the North Freedom resident knew a problem when she saw one. In 1978, the Sauk County landfill was overflowing, 10 years ahead of schedule. Zantow recalls visiting the facility one day, and watching, depressed, as plastic bottles whipped in the wind.

Recycling pioneer Milly Zantow. Photo by Milly Zantow

“I thought, ‘This is ridiculous,’” Zantow says. “‘We can’t have this.’”

Her refusal to accept an ever-expanding heap of trash sparked a national revolution. One woman changed the way America looked at garbage. In fact, she changed the very definition of “garbage.”

“I just knew it had to happen. Down deep in my heart, I knew.”

Getting started

Zantow knew recycling plastic was possible. On a recent trip to Japan, she had seen bins on city streets and curbsides that separated plastic, glass and metal from garbage.

If she were going to solve the Sauk County landfill crisis, Zantow knew she needed to learn about the plastics industry. She read the plastics encyclopedia, spoke to experts and contacted companies specializing in the material.

She called the Borden Milk Company in Milwaukee. “What do you do when you have a flawed jug come through that you can’t use?” she asked.

The reply: “We put it back and run it through again.”

A light bulb went off.

“Aha! That was my answer,” she says.  “If they could recycle it in the very beginning, why couldn’t we recycle post-consumer material?”

But convincing companies to use recycled plastic and politicians to enact recycling laws was no easy task. Wisconsin legislators laughed in her face. They told her the concept was 20 years ahead of its time.

Zantow didn’t back down. She eventually convinced Flambeau Plastic, a company in Baraboo, to experiment with recycling the material. But there was a catch: the recycled plastic needed to be ground before they would use it.

“Well, where am I going to get a grinder?” Zantow recalls thinking after she hung up the phone.

Millly Zantow crushes cans for recycling at E-Z Recycling. Attribute: Photo courtesy of Milly Zantow

She contacted a manufacturer that specialized in commercial plastics grinding. When she inquired about purchasing a machine to recycle post-consumer plastics, her request was met with laughter.

“Oh, they thought that was the funniest thing they ever heard,” Zantow says. “He said, ‘I just can’t imagine doing that.’ But he said, ‘I’ll do it. If you get the $5,000, I’ll do it.’”

Reinventing recycling

That mountain of money seemed even bigger than the landfill at the time. Zantow called a friend, Jenny Ehl, to propose they both cash in their life insurance policies to buy the grinder. She figured they wouldn’t need the insurance for years while the plastic bottles were immediate.

With their policies liquidated and the plastic grinder paid for in full, Zantow and Ehl started a recycling program in 1979, known as E-Z Recycling.