ERI, Al-jon Bale Hurricane Appliances

A 20-acre recycling site in New Orleans helps to illustrate the devastation Hurricane Katrina brought to residents of the Gulf Coast region. The site is ripe and rife with refrigerators and freezers that were damaged by the storm and its aftereffects.

On average, 6,000 appliances arrive daily at the site, which is one of seven operating in New Orleans. The rotting food is removed from each fridge, as is the Freon refrigerant, prior to crushing.

“When I come to work, all I see are fields of refrigerators and other appliances; plus, I see and smell mountains of wasted food,” H.C. Morris, vice president of Environmental Recycling Inc. (ERI), a subcontractor who is baling hurricane-damaged appliances from the area. “But, I also see progress as each of our Al-jon balers’ process some 200 bales a day, each bale weighs nearly 1,600 pounds,” Morris says in a press release issued by Al-jon, which is based in Ottumwa, Iowa.

ERI will process nearly 75 percent of the white goods in New Orleans, but the company is also a part of the cleanup for Hurricanes Rita and Wilma.

With additional operations in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida, ERI contacted Al-jon to find the additional equipment needed to meet the demands from this year’s hurricane season. Currently, 12 balers are poised to crush as much as 140,000 tons of metal debris in the affected areas.

At the New Orleans site, ERI processes nearly 480 tons of scrap metal per day using three balers, according to the press release. The scrap metal is being crushed into bales that can be hauled away easily on trucks.

Morris credits his company’s speed to ERI’s skilled operators and to the Al-jon balers they are using.

“I’m serious—we wouldn’t be able to do this at this pace without Al-jon,” Morris says.

“Good service response is important in any effort, but none as important as this,” says Kendig Kneen, president of Al-jon. “Everyone wants this cleaned up as fast as possible. Environmental Recycling and hurricane victims can’t afford to wait a week for a part—we have to get it to them right away.”

Morris wants to clean up this area as quickly as possible; however, the ERI site is only operating at one-third capacity because the city of New Orleans can’t deliver appliances fast enough to keep pace with the baling crews.

Typically, a skilled operator could make 250 to 300 bales a day, according to the press release. However, at the current pace, Morris predicts it will still take one to two years to finish all three phases of the recycling.

“Right now we’re just handling the appliances that were set at the curb,” he says. “In the second phase, cleanup crews will remove the appliances left inside the homes; and then the city will begin the third phase of demolition.”

Morris continues, “You have to consider the average home contains about 1,000 pounds of metal, such as duct work, heating and air conditioning units, hot water heaters, appliances, pipes and other items. Even operating at full capacity, it’s easy to see why the recovery from this disaster will take a long time.”