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Business & Tech

Following Ferndale's Recycling, from Curb to Michigan Jobs

Recycling is not only good for the environment, it's good for the economy.

What happens to that milk jug or old newspaper when you put it in your recycling bin? Well, they do a few things. They make money, create jobs and, of course, don't go into the landfill.

Most people recycle out of a civic responsibility to the environment. When you recycle in Ferndale, however, you are simultaneously participating in a lengthy economic process.

SOCRRA, Southeastern Oakland County Resource Recovery Authority, handles all of Ferndale’s recycling — as well as recycling for Berkley, Beverly Hills, Birmingham, Clawson, Hazel Park, Huntington Woods, Lathrup Village, Oak Park, Pleasant Ridge, Royal Oak and Troy.

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For starters, SOCRRA employs 12 people to sort through all the recycling that comes through its doors — approximately 140,000 pounds per day. Once sorted, it is sold to various companies, mostly in Michigan.

“We take pride in processing the recycled material to garner the highest amount of money possible for our municipalities," said SOCRRA General Manager Jeff McKeen. SOCRRA made approximately $2 million from recycling sales last year. These profits are credited to its member municipalities, including Ferndale. The recycling sales credits offset the cost of paying the contractors that collect Ferndale trash and recycling.

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Plastic is the most valuable of the recycled materials, McKeen said. In particular, milk jugs sold for $720 per ton in July. Ferndale plastic is sold to Clean Tech Inc., the recycling arm of Plastipak Holdings Inc. in Plymouth. There, the plastic is reprocessed, washed, ground up and finally molded into BB-sized pellets.

Plastipak sells these pellets to companies such as Procter & Gamble. The end product is new plastic containers for products such as salad dressing, soft drinks and shampoo bottles. Clean Tech Inc. and Plastipak employ more than 120 people in Michigan. The company started in 1989 with four employees and has grown exponentially as recycling has increased. The companies’ latest annual report stated $1.9 billion in sales.

“Recycling is not only good for the environment, it is good for the economy," said Karl Hatopp, Plastipak’s manager of procurement and sales.

McKeen said metals, including aluminum cans, are the next-most-profitable recyclable material. Ferndale’s recycled metal is sold to GLE Scrap Metal in Warren, where the metals are turned into raw commodities and sold to manufacturers. The metals are then used in construction projects or made into smaller structures, such as swing sets. GLE Scrap Metal opened for business in 2000 with two employees and has grown to a $30 million corporation with 75 employees in the past decade.

Ferndale recycled paper is sold to Graphic Packaging in Kalamazoo. It is then processed into various items that include boxes for cereal and tissue, beverage labels and packaging. A majority of the cardboard is sold to China, where it is made into new boxes.

McKeen estimates that of the approximately 100 million pounds of trash that comes in each day at SOCRRA, about 30 percent could have been recycled. He said that if Ferndale recycled 30 percent of its trash totals (the city currently recycles less than 10 percent), the city could receive an additional $120,000 in tax credits, all while creating Michigan jobs and helping the environment too, he said.

SOCRRA is located at 995 Coolidge in Troy, between 14 Mile and 15 Mile roads, across from Meijer. It is open to the public Monday-Saturday and offers tours of its full-scale recycling drop-off center.

Correction: A previous version of this story had the author of incorrect. This version corrects that.

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