Monday, March 3, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
Southern Nevada is known for its burgeoning casino industry and its seemingly endless open miles of desert panorama.
Ironically, it is the casino industry -- the same industry that has weathered accusations of blighting the desert with its neon structures -- that is a leader in an effort to preserve the landscape.
Indeed, some two dozen Las Vegas casinos are at the national forefront of large commercial enterprises that recycle trash.
These include, among others, several Strip resorts: the MGM Grand, Sheraton-Desert Inn, Caesars Palace, Rio, Las Vegas Hilton, Stratosphere, and the Monte Carlo.
While nearly an equal number of large casinos do not recycle, the number of the ones that do push the participation rate as high as 50 percent.
Many of these hotels contract with the Silver State Disposal Recycling Center.
The hotel recycling program gets top priority at Silver State, and as many as 140 of the recycling center's total force of 370 employees are subcontracted out to the hotel trash docks as sorters.
Working in shifts -- sometimes around the clock -- the sorters separate bottles, cans, cardboard, computer paper and other recyclable items from the casino waste stream.
James Bayer, operations manager at the recycling center, said recycling docks are starting to be considered as integral to the workings of a casino as service elevators and automatic change machines.
"More and more we're contacted during the drawing stages when a casino is designed," Bayer said. "It's because they realize we're an important part of the industry."
Bayer speaks in the plural for a reason: Silver State is only one of about a dozen local companies that are in the recycling business.
There is also Nevada Recycling and Silver Dollar Recycling, two companies that accept everything from discarded metals to cardboard; E Z Recycling, which advertises "cash for your trash"; and there are other companies that recycle food scraps, which account for about a third of all casino waste.
R.C. Farms, a North Las Vegas hog farm, utilizes leftover buffet food as animal feed.
"We always tell our friends when they go out to dinner in a casino to take just a bite or two out of the rolls. That way they go into our bins," joked Janet Combs of R.C. Farms.
Other independent recyclers, such as Baker Commodities and Darling Delaware, recycle grease from casino kitchens to be processed and used as an additive to pet foods and other items.
The amount of casino waste recycled by various local companies is staggering, when one considers that Las Vegas hosts 30 million visitors each year, and the American Hotel and Motel Association estimates that the average hotel guest generates from 1 pound to 2.5 pounds of refuse each day.
The casinos' recycling effort is applauded by Darlene Cartier, waste reduction coordinator at UNLV's Department of Environmental Studies.
"Right now, about half the casinos do recycle and half don't," Cartier said. "Overall, I think the casinos are doing a really good job, and, obviously, we're working with them to try to improve the ratios."
Casinos -- simply by the nature of the beast -- are perfectly suited to the concept of recycling.
This is because they dispense enormous quantities of recyclable materials each day, and through minimal effort are able to efficiently recycle everything from glass beer bottles and aluminum soft drink cans to the leftover foods from buffet tables.
"There are a number of advantages peculiar to casinos that make it cost effective for them to recycle, said Robert Steuteville, senior editor of "BioCycle," a national industry trade magazine.
"Just look at how much waste they generate," Cartier said.
"Some of these hotels generate as much as 20 or 30 tones of refuse (each day)," said James Bayer, operations manager at Silver State's recycling center. "These hotels are like small cities, and it's not difficult to devise a method to sort the trash at one location."
And so, 11 tons of refuse generated at Harrah's is funnelled each day through mixed waste docks.
At the Stardust, 120 cubic yards of refuse are recycled each week.
At the Tropicana, 30 tons of waste are recycled every month.
And at Treasure Island, 900 tons of waste are recycled each year.
Cartier noted that annually Harrah's saves almost $50,000 in hauling fees; the Maxim saves over $25,000, and Treasure Island saves $20,000.
Even more savings are realized through the recovery of items like silverware, plates, linens and salt and pepper shakers.
"The recovery of these assets can amount to thousands of dollars saved every month," Cartier says.
This is especially true at the Las Vegas Hilton, one of the larger hotels that participates in the Silver State Hotel Recycling Program.
"On an average day we recover 50 to 100 pieces of silverware, 10 to 20 glasses and 10 to 20 dishes," says Hilton spokesman Tim Chanaud. "We also recover a few TV remote controls every month and have recovered such items as table cloths, coffee pots and trays."
Chanaud notes that total amount of hotel garbage sorted every day amounts to approximately 100-120 full garbage cans.
Recycling industry leaders say these cost advantages are what spur many casinos to adopt recycling.
"The casino industry is very business oriented," Bayer said. "I can't go in and design a recycling program unless I have a very sharp pencil."
This has been the axiom since 1991 when the recycling movement began in Las Vegas.
But in recent years, there has been a more intensive effort among some of the newer hotels to recycle.
At the rock 'n' roll-themed Hard Rock Hotel all 1,600 employees are encouraged to recycle everything from cardboard boxes to glass bottles throughout the day.
"We even save old kitchen rags," said spokeswoman Dana Olliges.
And if the policy at Planet Hollywood at Caesars Forum is any indication, the effort to recycle among casinos will reach a new high if the theme-restaurant chain follows through with it's plan to build an $830 million 3,200-room Strip megaresort.
At Planet Hollywood, the theme restaurant not only recycles glass, cardboard, aluminum, plastic and food residuals from its own customers, it also invites other Caesars Forum establishments to cart their waste to its receiving dock to be recycled.
Executive Chef Richard Giffen says the recycling effort at Planet Hollywood has cut the amount of trash by as much as two thirds.
"It can be expensive, and sometimes you have to find the markets to ship to, but it's worth it," Giffen said. "Somebody has to live here 100 years from now, and we want to do our part to make sure the population does not live in a world overflowing with trash."
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