Before work, Phoenix resident Beth Baldacchino wheels her royal blue recycling bin, full of yesterday’s Arizona Republic, Quaker Oats containers and plastic milk jugs, to the curb for recycling pick-up. The contents of this barrel, and her neighbors’ barrels, will become part of the 126,000 tons collected annually from Phoenix, the nation’s fifth largest city.
These recyclables won’t wait here long. Soon, they’ll be trucked to one of two sorting facilities in the city, sold to private businesses and remanufactured into new goods. Some will even make their way to China.
In Arizona, yesterday’s newsprint and other recyclables aren’t just reducing the natural resources used to make new materials. They’re galvanizing the economy. Processing and remanufacturing facilities are creating jobs, sales revenues and state taxes. Paper fiber, which accounts for 60 percent of the state’s recyclables, is one such economic stimulator.
Pick a winner
Jake Eckenrode, plant manager of the Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) run by the Hudson Baylor Corporation, surveys his neon safety-vest-clad employees as they sort the recyclables delivered by the City of Phoenix. Four days a week, waste management trucks transport a pile of recyclables about the size of a small house to the northwest Phoenix plant.
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Paper awaits recycling.
The materials are dumped onto a conveyer belt that whizzes past two dozen sets of rubber-gloved hands that remove unusable materials like plastic grocery bags, tire rims and the occasional bath towel until only usable goods remain. The mechanical sorting system gradually isolates each product from the others. Along the way, newspapers climb the angle sorter and tumble over the top as the plastic, glass and aluminum containers are sifted through mesh onto another system of conveyer belts below. The paper is then compacted into car-sized bales and wrapped with wire.
Under contract with the City of Phoenix, Hudson Baylor owns the equipment housed in the MRF. The company processes the materials and returns the majority of the profits to the city. Founded as a New York glass recycling company in 1983, Hudson Baylor has since expanded to process multiple products in several municipalities. The plant in northwest Phoenix is one of the largest in the Southwest.
The city may save money in the long run by reducing the waste deposited in its landfills. Thus, the fields top out more slowly and cut down on the funds the city must spend to purchase and maintain additional land for refuse.
“Instead of paying to bury materials in the ground, the city is saving landfill space and even making money,” Eckenrode says.
The MRFs generate about $10 million per year in revenue from materials sales, according to Carl Smith, a solid waste administrative analyst for the City of Phoenix. Smith says the revenues from selling recyclable materials more than cover the cost of processing them. “By collecting waste and sending it to the landfill, we have a negative cash flow because we have to pay for collection and maintenance. With recycling, we have a positive cash flow.”
Processing and repurposing materials creates new jobs and tax revenues. A 2004 Arizona Recycling Economic Information (REI) Study found that between 1995 and 2000, every 1,000 tons of goods created 2.4 collecting and processing jobs. If those goods then travel to a recycling facility, they support an additional 2.7 jobs.
Eckenrode employs more than 30 people at the northwest Phoenix MRF alone. “There are 35 jobs here that didn’t exist before this plant did,” says Eckenrode. The workers’ pay starts at $7 per hour and increases according to skill level.
Overall, the northwest Phoenix plant alone sorts 55,000 tons of recyclable materials per year. That’s roughly equivalent to the weight of 137 semi-trailer trucks that will transport the materials to their next destination. About 60 percent of this is paper.
A blank page
Eckenrode estimates that America Chung Nam, a paper broker for China, buys about half the paper and cardboard from the facility. Abitibi-Consolidated, owner of a paper mill in Snowflake, Ariz., purchases another portion of the newsprint, white paper and glossy paper to recycle into more newsprint. Arizona’s newsprint is 55 percent to 75 percent recycled content—the highest of any state in the U.S., according to David Janke of the Department of Environmental Quality. Paper recycling plants use some harsh chemicals in the process, but these are the very ones used to create new paper.
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A GreenFiber employee cleans the hammerhead, one of the machines that recycles newspaper into cellulose fiber.
GreenFiber, a company that produces cellulose housing and building insulation from newspapers, buys another portion. At the GreenFiber plant in west Phoenix, Francisco Gonzales is just beginning his shift. The jovial 29-year-old weaves around the mounds of newspapers, slapping hands with his co-workers in greeting. Here, used newsprint, cardboard and phonebooks are dumped onto a conveyer belt, where they rattle past employees sorting out the occasional cowboy boot and baby diaper that have slipped through.
The conveyor belt carries the paper through the “fluffer” and beneath a mist of water, which helps reduce the risk of fire as the flammable material runs through the hot machinery. The paper is then mulched into 4-inch square pieces in the shredder, and chewed into smaller pieces in the hammerhead before reaching the “fiberizer.”
Once through the fiberizer, the paper will be the ideal pillow-stuffing consistency for insulation. It looks much like a colony of dust bunnies. The fibers are then coated with boric acid, a fire retardant, and bagged.
At the end of the line, Gonzales stacks the bales onto a pallet for shipping. He has worked at the plant for a year and half and earns $11.50 an hour. On paydays he turns his entire check over to his wife. “Happy wife, happy life,” he says.
Gonzales is one of 50 full-time employees at the plant. In Arizona, nearly 11,000 people worked in the recycling industry and accumulated $264 million in payroll, according to the Arizona REI Study.
Ashley M. BiggersCLICK IMAGE TO VIEW
Francisco Gonzales stacks bales of GreenFiber insulation made from recycled paper.
The GreenFiber plant produces half a million bags of insulation per year. These bags are sold to retailers, such as Home Depot and Lowe’s, and directly to housing contractors, generating taxable revenues for the state. The Arizona REI Study estimates that between 1995 and 2000, the recycling and reuse industry created $23 million in government revenues. Although this is a small segment of the state’s multibillion-dollar tax revenues, this revenue stream wouldn’t exist without recycling.
GreenFiber cites several advantages of their product over traditional insulation. Manufacturing employees aren’t breathing in harsh chemicals and fiberglass particles. It costs less to produce, the insulation quality is higher—and it’s cheaper for the consumer too.
Production manager Eric Valenzuela says the company is trying to incorporate green business practices as well. By implementing a recycling program, he estimates they have cut the refuse they take to the landfill by 70 percent in the past year.
Valenzuela keeps a royal blue paper-recycling bin next to his trash can. There, among the office paper, lies a newspaper. He says he’ll be sure to recycle it.
Reach the reporter at ashley.biggers@asu.edu.
