BUTTE -- Some Mining City business owners think being green is more than what you do on St. Patrick's Day.

It isn't so much a color as it is being environmentally conscious.

And recycling in the work place -- as well as at home -- is one way of going green.

Essie Etchingham and Jimmy Doolan brought that environmental awareness with them when they opened The Hummingbird Cafe, 605 W. Park St., last fall. Doolan said they try to recycle as intensely at work as they do at home.

"We run a business like we run our personal life," Doolan said.

Doolan and Etchingham recycle all their plastics and glass. They save the used coffee grounds -- of which they go through plenty -- at the end of each day for compost. The couple even gives their vegetable scraps, such as carrot shavings, to people who feed them to livestock.

"We strive to have one bag of trash as the end of each day," Doolan said.

The "plastic" to-go cups and silverware used at the cafe aren't even plastic. The cups are made from corn and the "silverware" from potatoes, which makes them biodegradable. Doolan says he orders these products from a Missoula company called Treecycle.

He admits it is more expensive for him to buy these environmentally friendly products.

"It's still worth paying a little extra for it," he said.

Robert Edwards Jr., of Silver Bow Properties in Butte, has tenants who like to recycle and broken-down refrigerators he needed to get rid of. Plastic bags full of aluminum cans are unsightly, and old refrigerators are expensive and a pain in the vegetable crisper to have disposed of.

So Edwards came up with a practical solution. He painted the dilapidated refrigerators green, attached a can crusher and turned them into recycling bins. A recycling bin-fridge sits at each of his properties.

"I'm from California and you have to recycle there," he said.

A pub in uptown Butte can certainly create plenty of garbage. But Brian McGregor, owner of the Silver Dollar Saloon, 133 S. Main St., tries his best to put as little of that garbage in the trash.

Before he taps his first beer of the evening, McGregor is busy separating his plastics, cans, bottles and cardboard, and loading them in the back of his beat-up pickup. It's all going to a local recycling center.

"I do it because it's an obligation and a responsibility," McGregor said. "It's unfortunate that too few people recognize that."

McGregor says he's "been blessed" to run a business and recycling is one way of giving something back.

He wishes more people in Butte would consider recycling.

"We're alone among other cities in this state," he said. "Recycling is something we have to teach to the young people to get them to start doing it every day."