Green TV show features local mattress recycling company.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

What does a television episode titled "Teeny Weeny Green Bikini" have to do with recycling old mattresses in Eugene?

You better call your cable provider right now if you want to find out - because the episode airs at 4 p.m. today on the Discovery network's new Planet Green TV channel.

"We're really excited about it," said Terry McDonald, executive director of the St. Vincent de Paul Society of Lane County, talking about the short segment called "Once Upon a Mattress" that was filmed in April at the society's Oakland, Calif., mattress recycling plant.

The segment is among several on the first-ever episode of "G Word" that also includes how eco-friendly energy has found a home on a Texas wind ranch and models showing off the latest eco-chic swimwear.

Planet Green TV, billed as the "first and only 24-hour eco-lifestyle television network," launched Wednesday at 3 p.m. PDT. The one-hour "G Word" is just one of several shows on the new channel. The channel's Web site says "being green is no longer just for granola-loving hippies. It's a lifestyle, an attitude, a state-of-mind, and it's shaking up the pop culture landscape." And "G Word" is "a little bit Jon Stewart, a little bit `Access Hollywood' and even a teensy little bit Monty Python."

But why would this hip new channel some are calling "eco-tainment" care about McDonald and the 150,000 or so mattresses - enough to "fill Mac Court about eight times," McDonald said - that St. Vinnie's recycles at the Eugene and Oakland operations?

"We really are the only commercially viable mattress recycler in the world," McDonald said Wednesday, standing among piles of mattresses in St. Vinnie's Prairie Road building. "And so that's a big deal."

McDonald got a call this spring from Todd Sutton of San Francisco, who operates www.wasteSleuth.com, a Web site that provides waste prevention, reuse and recycling consultation. Sutton had been contacted by a Los Angeles production company working with the Discovery network to find ideas for "G Word." Sutton knew about St. Vinnie's Oakland operation and what a great example it is of a recycling-based business, he said by phone Wednesday while "waiting for the cable guy" to hook him up with Planet Green TV.

"Terry is quite a mover and shaker," Sutton said. "He likes to find markets for products that other people don't handle."

In the segment, Sutton said he and McDonald find a mattress on the streets of Oakland as a demonstration. They take it to a thrift store only to be told it's unwanted. They try a waste transfer station, then finally take it to the St. Vinnie operation and have it made into a dog bed.

The Oakland mattress recycling operation started in 1999, and the one here on Prairie Road in 2003. The nonprofit society had been recycling mattresses for years, but had never disassembled and rebuilt them for sale. Employees at both plants tear apart the mattresses and box springs and sort the fabric, foam, wood and metal pieces into separate piles that are delivered to manufacturers. Carpet companies buy the foam, and companies that make moving pads buy the padding, McDonald said. "About 80 percent of the components we can find a market for," he said.

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