Used clothes useful, recycling board told

Firms discuss ‘green’ efforts in state

A large pile of roofing shingles sit Friday behind a fenced area along Industrial Harbor Road in the The Port of Little Rock area. The Little Rock Port Authority is looking for ways to dispose of about 45,000 cubic yards of roofi ng shingles.
A large pile of roofing shingles sit Friday behind a fenced area along Industrial Harbor Road in the The Port of Little Rock area. The Little Rock Port Authority is looking for ways to dispose of about 45,000 cubic yards of roofi ng shingles.

Everyone on the continent of Africa could get a new outfit if every American donated four pieces of clothing, a co-owner of a Springdale company told the state Marketing Board for Recyclables on Friday.

"It's time to move past bottles, cans and only donating clothes when you clean out your closet," businessman Vance Brock told the board. "We should have recycling drives at schools for clothes."

Brock's family's business, Northwest Rags Inc. of Springdale, makes commercial cleaning cloths for American companies but also ships usable clothing to developing countries. The company shipped 80,000 pounds of clothes this week, he said.

"Go to a landfill, and you'll see clothes everywhere," Brock said. "Missing buttons and tears can be sewn. You can make a pair of shorts out of ripped jeans. Even if something can't be worn, the material can be recycled. But people don't want to drive to a recycling center to drop off one piece of clothing, even if they live in town. In rural areas, clothes that people can wear wind up in burn pits."

The marketing board matches Arkansas companies that recycle with other entities that provide materials or a market for recycled products. The board held its quarterly meeting at the headquarters of Ecotech, also in Springdale.

Ecotech recycles materials into resin pellets for shipment to another plant in California for use in manufacturing various plastic products. The company takes plastic waste from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The pellets the company creates from that waste are used to make products such as plastic containers, and water and food bowls for pets.

Another Springdale company may have a solution to removing tons of unwanted roofing shingles at the Little Rock Port Authority, the board was told Friday.

Randell Shelton, managing partner of Shingle Resource Recycling LLC of Springdale, said his company has developed a chemical method to break down roofing shingles into their component parts. Asphalt cement, which can be used for paving and other purposes, is the most valuable substance recovered, he said. The company is seeking a patent on its process, which uses no heat or pressure, he said, adding that the chemicals used are not hazardous.

Lars Recycling LLC, a Maryland corporation, left the Little Rock Port Authority with 45,000 cubic yards of roofing shingles three years ago, Port Authority Executive Director Bryan Day said Friday. That amount of material would fill about 120 extra-large railroad boxcars, figures show. The port operates on the Arkansas River, where it has access to barge traffic.

Lars Recycling is not operating anymore because the market for chipped-up shingles for paving and other uses shifted after the company started its Little Rock operation, a spokesman for Lars said Friday.

"I hope it works, and if he had a facility up and running where we could see it working, that would be the way we'd go," Day said of Shelton's company.

"We asked for a request for qualifications in January and got four proposals back, ranging from 'We'll haul them off and put them in a landfill for you for a whole lot of money' to this one," Day said. "We've not made a decision yet and are open to other options, but we'd like to not put all that material into the ground."

The port's stockpile of roofing shingles isn't leaching chemicals into soil or water, Day said. The piles are fenced off, he said.

"One of these days, though, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality is going to call us and say, 'All right, folks, it's been years. You need to do something,'" he said.

In other developments Friday, the board was told the Benton County Solid Waste District and the Boston Mountain Solid Waste District in Washington County are in the preliminary stages of discussing a regionwide agreement for managing recyclables. Robyn Reed, director of the Boston Mountain district, said a combined volume of materials that can be marketed and a consistent, area-wide standard of what materials will be recycled would help both districts.

"We'll have a better update in a year," Reed said.

Metro on 06/20/2015

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