Cox Communications employee Joel Frenger discards a paper plate in the company cafeteria in West Warwick. Cox, which serves more than 600 meals a day there, has arranged for garbage and paper products to be picked up and converted into compost for landscaping use.

The Providence Journal / Kathy Borchers

WEST WARWICK — Just about everybody knows that plastics, paper and glass can be recycled and made into something new.

But when Cox Communications rolled out a recycling initiative at its local headquarters, in the West Warwick Business Park, it took things a step further.

Since April, all half-eaten sandwiches, leftover veggies, apple cores and other food scraps that normally would go into the trash have been funneled into biodegradable bags and shipped to a composting facility. Cox is the first large business in the state to compost the garbage it generates.

“Anything we can do to reduce the stuff we send [to the state Central Landfill] and send it to a place where it adds some value is a good thing for the community,” said Brad Shipp, vice president of information technology.

According to the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation, the agency that operates the landfill, roughly 4 percent of all businesses in the state recycled to some degree in 2004. The Department of Environmental Management is compiling fresher statistics by asking businesses to fill out an online survey.

Many homeowners compost on a small scale, but the DEM knows of only three corporate entities that compost on a large sale, said Alyson Silva, commercial recycling coordinator in the department’s Office of Waste Management. Besides Cox, she said, they are Whole Foods and the private Portsmouth Abbey School.

“I believe more companies will look into composting because it is so good for the environment,” Silva said. “Organics are a big part of the waste stream for businesses such as hotels, restaurants and bars.”

Composting breaks down food scraps, vegetables and other organic materials and turns them into rich, dark soil.

Beyond reducing the amount of trash going to the Central Landfill, composting helps the atmosphere, Silva said. When organics go to the dump, they get covered up by trash. As they decompose, they release methane — a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere 20 times more effectively than carbon dioxide, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. When composted, Silva said, the materials are exposed to oxygen, which keeps it from producing methane.

But there are few licensed companies capable of handling large amounts of composting materials in the area, Silva said. In Rhode Island, she said, there is only one –– Earth Care Farm, in Charlestown –– that can handle any kind of organic material, including meat.

“I wish there was more composting infrastructure — facilities — available,” Silva said. “There isn’t as much choice for companies that do want to compost their [food] waste.”

Cox uses PF Recycling, a New Bedford company, which collects the bags weekly and takes the material to Newland Farms, in Norton, Mass., for composting. The composting process takes three months. That means that next month, Cox should receive its first shipment of fresh compost from the farm, Quinn said. The material will be used for landscaping on the company grounds.

The push began last year when company executives made the commitment to reduce the company’s energy consumption by 20 percent by 2017. Cox Conserves, the national program to help the company’s employees use less energy, promote sustainability and encourage environmentally friendly practices, was the brainchild of that initiative.

The West Warwick office, with 860 employees, is one of the larger Cox sites in New England. The goal is to spread the program to all 46 Cox offices in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts by the end of the summer.

“Cox believes very strongly in being a good corporate citizen,” said Shipp. “This is something that’s important to West Warwick and Rhode Island and the whole country, and, in fact, the whole planet. We can take the leading role to encourage companies to do the same thing. For us, it’s about our overall commitment to the community and our commitment to the environment, too.”

Sustainability came in phases to Cox.

Small green recycling bins appeared at every cubicle and larger bins found a place in the hallway. Company cars morphed into hybrid cars — an upgrade from the gas guzzling cars employees used to drive on the lot. It still uses some large vans and trucks, which have no hybrid alternatives, Merriman said. The move proved to be a money saver as gas moved past $4 a gallon in Rhode Island earlier this month.

“We got chided when we first made the change,” he said. “[People would say] ‘look at that teeny car.’ Now they’re not laughing anymore.”

Paper towels in the bathrooms were replaced with Dyson air blades –– super efficient, high-powered air dryers. The building’s boiler — which used to take up a small room — was replaced with two energy-efficient boilers about the size of a small ATM machine.

Then, it moved to the cafeteria.

Foam plastic, out. Biodegradable cups, plates and utensils, in.

The company also began a recycling program to help cut down on waste. Most programs accept plastic soda bottles, milk jugs and plastic plumbing, but the Cox program goes a step further. It accepts plastics coded 1 through 7 –– which includes milk cartons, plastic plates, foam plastic, plastic wrap and yogurt containers. A separate bin next to the recyclables is marked for composting materials — food scraps, cardboard trays and plates, and other organic materials. Another bin is marked for trash.

If employees forget, there’s a poster board above the recycling bins to remind them of what trash goes where.

“We wanted to make it very easy for employees to help out; that’s why we have the signs. People are really engaged and really excited.”

The Cox Conserves Team is a group of employees who encourage their coworkers to participate in the initiatives and field suggestions for other earth-saving tips the company can employ.

Joel H. Frenger, an account services team leader in the Solution Center, is a member of the team and said that feedback from coworkers has been positive.

“It’s been amazing,” he said. “People will come up to me with suggestions. I’ve even seen people go into the recycle bins if something is not in the right bin and take it upon themselves to move it.”

That kind of ownership, Frenger said, came in part because employees were trained in the new initiatives and understood the importance of their participation.

The move has netted visible results.

The composting materials and plastics, in 14 recycling bins, are lined up behind the building, while the paper products are bundled into bales and wheeled out onto a flatbed truck to await pickup. Two bins filled with used vegetable oil will be donated to Newport Biodiesel to be turned into fuel.

One small bag of trash sits in a trash can in the back room. Well past noon, the bag is far from half full. Since the initiative began, Cox, whose cafeteria serves more than 600 meals a day, estimates that 75 percent of the waste generated gets recycled.

“Once you get the pieces in order, it’s seamless,” Merriman said. “We hope it’s something other companies emulate. [Composting] doesn’t have to be horrible. And it doesn’t smell.”

The program is self-sustainable. With each energy-saving measure the company installs, it saves money on utilities, Shipp said.

“That’s money we then use to fund the composting program and recycling,” he said. “Our plan is not to pass along that cost to the customers, but to absorb that cost in other areas.”

tbuford@projo.com