Rawlins Daily Times, Jerrett RaffetyBy Janice Kurbjun
Times staff writer
The recycling business is like trading in cash crops.
Similar to farms, the productivity of a plant is limited by space and demand. Also like farms, a plant buys and sells its product with the markup necessary to operate.
This information explains why the recycling program in Rawlins is limited. The city’s recycling center is but a transit point for Ark Recycling Center, a nonprofit organization in Laramie.
“We are maxed out on what we can do,” said Bill Vance, Ark recycling services coordinator. Because Vance has a market for plastic products that bear the numbers one and two, he sticks with them.
Milk jugs, categorized as No. 2 opaque, go to Heartland Biocomposites in Torrington which uses the plastic as a component in composite wood.
“I believe in supporting a business right here in Wyoming,” Vance said.
Vance ships most of his No. 1 plastic to Michigan where it is processed. No. 1 plastic often get shredded and heated which turns it into pellets for stuffed animal filling.
The Rawlins Recycling Center currently accepts the things it can resell to Laramie. Aside from plastic, it gathers aluminum cans, steel cans, newsprint, magazines, office paper, corrugated cardboard and brown and clear glass. Last year, the center shipped off 792,498 pounds of material.
Between 2006 and 2007, Rawlins nearly doubled its recycling efforts, with the largest increases in the deliveries of cardboard, newspaper and magazines, No. 1 plastics, brown glass and office paper.
If Rawlins residents want to see recycling options expand, particularly to include other types of plastic, they should tune into Ark Recycling’s goal to buy a $5 million piece of machinery — the automated sorter. To make such a large purchase, the organization needs the volume to make it profitable. The machine’s efficiency would result in more “crops” to trade and could mean instituting a curbside pickup in Rawlins, Cheyenne and Wheatland.
Mulch for the taking
The Rawlins Recycling Center has made no changes to what products it will accept this spring, but it will offer free mulch.
Last fall, the center stopped accepting wood to turn into mulch because it was overloaded with limbs because of tree damage from a storm. “The parking lot was a sea of broken tree branches and limbs,” said John Medina, superintendent of the recycling center. Now, those branches have been converted to mulch, available to the masses.
Timber is again being accepted at the center along with the usual materials. Medina encourages Rawlins residents to keep the recycling center in mind during the city clean up period.
“People are less willing to separate and recycle when the landfill opens its doors at no charge,” he said. “They often opt to get it all done in one shot.”
