Recycling Efforts Gain Stature In Corporate Profit Pictures

Companies see bottom-line benefit in recycling waste.

No one will ever call them tree-huggers, but a love of a different kind of green is driving Minnesota's companies to recycling efforts that are bringing money to corporate coffers.

Recycled material pumped $3.48 billion in sales into Minnesota last year and created 8,700 manufacturing jobs, according the Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance.

Andersen Corp., 3M Co., Rock-Tenn Co., Bituminous Roadways, Boise Cascade, Master Mark, and Liberty Diversified Industries are a few of the 100 companies shoveling waste into manufacturing processes that ultimately make useful products and slash expenses. Recycling also produced $1.7 billion in profits in 2000, the last year for which numbers are available. Sales from recycled goods have doubled since 1997.

3M made $20 million last year from selling 163 million pounds of its own scrap paper, metal, plastics and chemicals to other companies. The company saved millions more by recycling another 63 million pounds of waste back into its 3M Post-it Notes, desk organizers, tape dispensers and other products.

Cardboard maker Rock-Tenn Co. in St. Paul pays Target Stores, Byerly's, Kowalski's Markets, Marvin Windows and other Minnesota companies $20 million a year for their paper and box waste.

"We purchase 1,000 tons a day and turn out new paperboard that is 100 percent recycled," said Tom Troskey, paper recycling manager. The new paperboard becomes new boxes for Cheerios, Puffs tissues, Crest toothpaste and other products.

The savings helps explain why Minnesota recycles 48 percent of all its trash, one of the highest rates in the country.

"This effort is not simply a feel-good environmental activity that keeps newspapers out of landfills," said Paul Gardner, executive director of Recycling Association of Minnesota. "If one looks just at Minnesota, recycling has created 8,700 manufacturing jobs, which leads to a ripple effect of another 19,000 jobs in the state. The resulting state tax revenue from these jobs is about $93 million."

"There is a monetary payback to recycling," said Wayne Gjerde, recycling and market development coordinator for the state environmental assistance office.

Kaplan Metals Reduction Co. in St. Paul turns junk into reusable products every day.

On a recent workday, front-end loaders hoisted a junked Oldsmobile Cutlass onto the crushing deck at Kaplan, where the car was reduced to a flattened slab ready to be hauled to Cargill's North Star Steel plant. There, it was shredded, melted and formed into steel bars.

"They become bridges or highways," said Bob Kaplan, fourth-generation Kaplan co-owner. "People can say, 'Look, I'm driving over my old car.' "

Kaplan smashes 2,000 cars a month, giving North Star Steel 24,000 tons of steel a year. Kaplan, who gets abandoned cars from cities for free, earns about $35 a car, enough to support six workers. Recovered aluminum, brass and copper from Northwest Airlines, plumbers and electricians support the other 14 employees.

Towers of pancaked cars pile up at North Star's yard. A massive mechanical arm resembling ice tongs plucks the cars one at a time and places them on a conveyor belt that takes them through chambers in which they are split, shredded and gnarled into 10-foot heaps.

"We can shred a car in 30 seconds," raw-materials manager Rob Farrell said proudly. Up the road, the steel scrap finds its new life in a 3,000-degree furnace that shoots out red-hot beams ready for use in roadways and other products.

Polaris, with $1.5 billion in annual sales, has bought steel from North Star for years.

"We use 28 million pounds of recycled steel per year and 14 million pounds of recycled aluminum," said Jeff Bjorkman, Polaris vice president of operations.

Nearly every production leftover, be it plastic, foam, metal, wood or chemicals, is recycled back into Polaris or sold. In the end, 15 percent of each ATV, snowmobile, boat and motorcycle is made of recycled material. Scrap from its foam seat cushions is sold and turned into carpet padding.

"Our recycling saves in the teens of millions of dollars each year," Bjorkman said.

While North Star and Polaris both pay for their raw materials, other recyclers catch an even sweeter deal - allowing for two income streams.

Nylon Board Manufacturing in Medford earns 10 cents a pound for old dirty carpeting it receives from new-carpet installers. NBM chops the stuff into one-inch bits, heats it to 600 degrees and extrudes thick plastic sheeting and tile backboards. The durable, waterproof sheets are used by contractors and are expected to garner $3 million in sales next year, general manager James O'Blennis said.

The sheets now are sold through distributors but will be selling for $20 to $40 each in major hardware stores next year, said Gjerde, who first suggested the company consider carpets as a raw material.

The NBM plant, which began operating in September, has one machine, 17 workers and keeps 1,000 tons of carpet out of landfills each month.

On the banks of the St. Croix in Bayport, workers on yellow bikes, orange forklifts and trolleys cruise through Andersen Windows' massive plant on a recycling mission.

On a recent visit, barrel-chested ripsaw operator Dennis Aspen sliced 16-foot Ponderosa-pine board into five planks to start the first stage in window making. About 850,000 board feet slide by Aspen and his team each week.

"This is our highest-paid production worker," said environmental engineering manager Kirk Hogberg, pointing to Aspen. "His job is to reduce waste. . . . We try not to throw anything away."

"Whoops" cuts are glued together to create two-by-fours, with as many as 30 small pieces forming a single plank.

At Andersen, sawdust is gold. It fuels the boilers, is sold for animal bedding and is mixed with vinyl to create Fibrex, a thermoplastic resin that's melted and extruded to make waterproof window and door sills and decking in the Renewal by Andersen line.

Recycling saved Andersen millions of dollars but also helped it reach $2 billion in sales this year.

"Andersen Windows does recycling very well," Gjerde said. "It certainly is a very successful product for them."

The same is true for Roger and Debby Anderson in Shakopee, who fell into the recycled materials business by accident. In 1994 they bought sturdy plastic-lumber made from melted milk jugs. The idea was to build a deck.

"But then I decided I just wanted some chairs," said Debby Anderson, recalling how their company, By-The-Yard, was formed. She cut and fiddled with the lumber until she'd made a fine pair of Adirondack chairs that would never need painting. Neighbors and friends persuaded the Andersons to show the chairs at the State Fair.

"Before we knew it we were making chairs in the basement until 2:30 every night," she said.

Today they are building a new plant, have 11 employees and $1 million in sales.

"It just keeps growing," she said. – Associated Press

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