Recycling trend becomes a growing economic factor

By Steve Moyer

Nevada Daily Mail

It's not just for people in earth shoes anymore, recycling is becoming more capitalistic. A new study shows that recycling sales in Missouri amounted to $5.1 billion in 2003.

The Missouri Recycling Economic Information Study, conducted at the Institute of Public Policy in the University of Missouri's Truman School of Public Affairs showed that employees in the industry earned more than $700 million in addition to other indirect effects such as the purchasing of goods and services from other industries.

"The recycling, manufacturing and reuse industry plays an important role in Missouri by reducing the use of raw natural resources and energy consumption," David Valentine, senior research analyst for the Truman School, said. "However, recycling activities also provide important economic benefits over and above environmental benefits."

Researchers examined four business sectors, including recycling collection, recycling processing, recycling manufacturing, and reuse and manufacturing. They discovered that recycling manufacturing provided the most benefit to the state, with $2.4 billion in direct sales, $4.75 million in direct payroll, and 17,962 employees. Recycling manufacturing includes paper and paperboard mills, nonferrous foundries, plastic converters, paper-based product manufacturers, and iron and steel foundries.

Several area individuals have been active in recycling activities and encourage more people to take part.

The city of Nevada's recycling maven, Dave Irwin, said that roughly 120 people a month use the Nevada recycling center. "In addition to members of the public we have a couple of businesses that bring stuff by," Irwin said. "The city hospital brings in about a half a ton of material in Wednesdays. Kennedy Agri-Center brings in things too."

Irwin said one of the most recycled items is the local newspaper. "Along with the other stuff that comes in we get newspapers, a lot of them," Irwin said.

Cecil Pritchett states that the best product to make money recycling is aluminum, specifically aluminum cans but that figuring the economic effects of recycling on the area are hard to determine.

"The kind of money that can be made from recycling in our area is difficult to determine because we do not have enough date available to obtain the information we need to calculate," Pritchett said.

Pritchett advocated a buyback center where people could turn in recyclable products for cash. "I would like to see Nevada establish a buyback center," Pritchett said. "It would encourage more people to recycle by actually receiving a small amount of money for their efforts. It could also eventually reduce the amount of money that they now pay for trash service."

Pritchett urged people to become more involved in recycling and stressed that in order to make recycling profitable someone has to buy recycled products.

"The bottom line is that to make recycling work we need to educate people on recycling and on buying recycled products," Pritchett said. "If we are not buying recycled products, we are not really recycling."