WSYR: Company Runs Own Recycling Center
Filed under: Earth 911 - January 15, 2008
We’ve all gotten something packed up in cardboard and Styrofoam but where does it all end up? One local company is working to keep all of its packaging materials out of the landfills.
Raymour and Flannigan built its own recycling center on its Liverpool campus. Millions of pounds of material are saved from the trash.
All day long workers are feeding machines with the millions of pounds of packaging materials the company uses every year. By volume, cardboard is the biggest item, but Styrofoam is the product the company really zeroed in on with two machines.
Jeff Lannier is the Senior Vice-President of Distribution for Raymour and Flanigan. He says Styrofoam does not biodegrade in landfills. “The product you see in a condensed form of Styrofoam really exists that way in a landfill for years to come.”
Lannier says the product the company recycles ultimately does get used for other things. “It’s used for picture frames, it’s used for insulation in air conditioners and those types of end products other manufacturers can use,” Lannier says.
About 50 tractor trailers a day bring in plastic, cardboard and Styrofoam from all of the companies 89 stores and service centers, but the company isn’t stopping there. “We provide beverages to all our customers that come into our showrooms and we’ll generate a million and a half bottles of empty water that would be used and can ultimately be recycled through this facility and consolidated down into different type of form,” says Lannier.
The company says it’s not really a money maker; it’s a saver, of the environment, and the company hopes an example to others of what can be done.
To find out where you can recycle things like bubble wrap and packing peanuts check out Earth911.org. The UPS Stores are one place that takes these things free of charge.