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Wrightsville Beach
Friday, March 29, 2024

Practice over profits

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GreenWaveBusinesses go green for many reasons: to set an example or secure a competitive edge against other businesses; to attract and retain new customers; to save on energy costs.

SurfBerry owner Rick Civelli’s motivation is simple. He sees it as the right thing to do.

“If I’m going to be in business, we’re going to do everything the right way, the way that’s good for both the environment and the local community,” Civelli said. “We’re going to put our practice over our profits.”

Civelli tries to reduce, reuse and recycle as much as possible. SurfBerry just launched a bottle return system for cold-pressed juices this month, in which all juices are bottled in-house in glass bottles. When a customer buys a juice and returns the bottle, he or she receives a 25-cent credit toward another juice.

All SurfBerry treats are served in biodegradable cups with biodegradable spoons, which costs thousands of extra dollars each year. Civelli considers the extra money spent an investment in the future of the community his business serves.

“We spend a lot more money because it’s important to me. We live in the greatest place in the world, and we need to take care of it and cherish it,” Civelli said.

Civelli is one of many Wrightsville Beach business owners motivated to make conservation a priority. Like Civelli, Annex Surf Supply Manager Chris Batten runs a plastic bag-free business. Batten repurposes cardboard shipping boxes as price tags and discarded wood for racks and displays to eliminate as much waste as possible. The Blockade Runner Beach Resort stocks rooms with reusable mugs and glasses, making disposable cups available upon request only.

Many of these choices are made without recognition or reward, but Wrightsville Beach — Keep It Clean coordinator Ginger Taylor wants to change that.

WB — Keep it Clean volunteers work with Ocean Conservancy to track trash picked up from the beach strand, and with reported numbers creeping toward 1,000 straws collected during only four months, May through August, Taylor is thinking about ways to encourage businesses making efforts to reduce waste, especially single-use plastics like straws.

Taylor invited local business owners to attend a roundtable discussion during the North Carolina Marine Debris Symposium in September, and Blockade Runner co-owner Bill Baggett attended. After the discussion, Taylor asked him if he would revisit the resort’s straw policy. The next morning, he notified her via email of the Blockade Runner’s new policy to serve straws by request only.

“It’s awesome that Blockade Runner took the lead in doing this. I think that will inspire other coastal businesses to say, ‘Hey, we can do that, too,’” Taylor said.

Down the beach strand, oceanfront Oceanic Restaurant serves compostable straws made from plant-based plastic upon request only. LM Restaurants district manager Scott Weikert attributed the policy to a heightened awareness of the restaurant’s impact on the beach.

“Wrightsville Beach has a reputation for being a very clean and beautiful beach. We want to add to that, not take away from it,” Weikert said.

Attendees of the marine debris symposium voiced support for an accreditation program to recognize coastal businesses that reduce single-use plastics. Taylor sees straws as a good starting point.

“We have to decide together what’s important and where we can make those changes, one step at a time. So if we start with straws, we can work on something else,” she said.

Some efforts, like investing in biodegradable to-go containers, cost more money and require business owners to weigh environmental values against profits.

“We want to do things because it’s the right thing to do, but being a business, obviously it’s nice to be recognized for it,” Weikert said.

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