Plastics recycling increases in county

John Upchurch, left, and John Williams, of Shelbyville Recycled Fiber, unload plastics collected from employees at Wal-Mart Distribution Center. (T-G Photo by Brian Mosely) [Click to enlarge] [Order this photo]

The machines at Shelbyville Recycled Fiber Company may make quite a racket, but they're an instrumental part in getting plastics recycled in Bedford County.

For the past few months, residents have been taking advantage of the availability of plastic recycling at the firm, located at 106 Cedar King Road, and now local industry is getting into the act.

Employees at Wal-Mart Distribution Center have been collecting bottles at work and also bringing in plastics from home to make sure they can be reused again instead of taking up space in a landfill.

Bill Dyer, of the distribution center, spearheaded the effort after talking to Gay Ervin, the county's solid waste coordinator, about what could be done to raise recycling awareness.

Ervin loaned Dyer a large trailer that the solid waste department uses for collecting aluminum cans and left it at the distribution center for a couple of months for plastics.

The result was seen Tuesday, with Dyer showing up at the recycling center with a full load of bottles, jugs and even large plastic pots used to store tree saplings.

Diane Forbes, who is general manager of Shelbyville Recycled Fiber, a division of RockTenn, said that while some businesses bring in industrial based plastics, Wal-Mart is the first industry to take up gathering plastics generally found in the household, like Types 1 & 2.

Type 1 plastics include items such as two-liter soda bottles, water bottles, cooking oil bottles and peanut butter jars. Type 2 are containers like detergent bottles and milk jugs.

The types can be co-mingled and are identified by a triangle with the number in the center on the bottom of each bottle. There are other grades of plastics as well, such as those which contain nylon or even glass.

Since kicking off the program in April, the firm has recycled three tons of plastic, resulting in a small savings of around $70, Irvin said. But Forbes said the plastics will never decompose and should be reused instead of going to waste.

Irvin also commented that since plastics are made from petroleum products, the prices of products that use plastics in their containers will likely go up.

Dyer said that Wal-Mart already recycles the plastic it uses at the facility, such as shrink wrap, but this program allows them to encourage workers to "capture the plastics at their home that may be going in the landfill and bring that to work."

The amount of plastic turned in by Wal-Mart amounted to 300 pounds or so of recyclable material. In the past, the solid waste authority has had problems justifying putting plastic recycling in its convenience centers because of the bulk involved with the bottles.

"It doesn't seem like a lot, but when you're getting it in small amounts, it takes so much to make a ton because the nature of the plastic makes it so light to start with," Forbes said.

Forbes also described the effort by the employees of the distribution center as "a pretty good start."