Putting West Virginia in the Zone

Factories in the state of West Virginia have produced tons of plastic resins and products over the years, and now the state is banking on a second life for that material to serve as another source of jobs and economic activity.

Morgantown, W. Va., served as the home of the RECCON 2005 conference, an event where attendees exchanged information on the trends and developments in the electronics recycling industry.

In another part of the state, businesses located in the Polymer Alliance Zone (PAZ) near Parkersburg are tapping into the plastics portion of the electronic scrap stream, attendees of RECCON 2005 learned.

According to R.V. “Buddy” Graham, president of PAZ, some 2,000 jobs have been created or soon will be because of electronics and plastics recycling operations located in the 158-acre zone in Davisville, W. Va.

Doug Ritchie is president of SDR Technologies LLC and Star Plastics, a custom compounding and molding company located in the PAZ. The company uses scrap television casings and computer monitors as part of the feedstock for the nearly 20 types of resins it produces.

Currently setting up an operation in the PAZ is Amandi Services, a company formed by the combination of electronics recycler Nxtcycle and cathode ray tube (CRT) glass recycler Envirocycle. The company’s new plant in the PAZ is involved in CRT monitor disassembly and could employ up to 300 people.

As part of a support system, the PAZ is also home to the Polymer Research Center and the National Center for Electronics Recycling (NCER). The NCER serves as an electronics recycling industry data collection network, including an electronic database being set up as a centralized data repository, according to Executive Director Jason Linnell.

The Polymer Research Center has explored additional markets for plastic scrap, including in composite building materials, in asphalt paving products and in further chemical breakdown to oils and resins, according to Mel Croucher, director of the center.