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March 28, 2024

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Evergreen Recycling lauds upgraded North Las Vegas facility

Evergreen Recycling

A year ago, Evergreen Recycling could process 15 to 18 tons of recyclable material every hour. But following about $2.2 million in renovations, that number has increased to roughly 25 tons of material per hour.

That difference is significant, said Len Christopher, general manager of Southern Nevada Recycling Centers. Next year, that means recycling services will be expanded to 60,000 more homes in Henderson, he said.

“It’s continually evolving,” Christopher said of the center’s operations. “We’ll have the infrastructure to be able to handle increasing demand.”

Evergreen Recycling, a part of Republic Services, held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Monday at its 333 West Gowan Road location in North Las Vegas to celebrate the company-financed renovations, which were completed in July. The event was also organized to bring attention to America Recycles Day, which started in 1997 as a day to draw attention to recycling efforts in communities nationwide.

Members of the North Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, Republic Services, and Richard Cherchio and Anita Wood of the North Las Vegas City Council, attended the ceremony and toured the facility.

The facility itself is a large warehouse space located in an industrial area of North Las Vegas. On one end of the warehouse there are piles of papers, bottles and cans, heaped together. Across the warehouse, past sorting machines and workers, are dozens of 1,500-pound bales of recycled material, all neatly sorted and stacked about two-stories tall.

That’s what Evergreen Recycling does. They process what residents and businesses throughout the valley toss into recycle bins -- about 100,000 tons within the next year -- and sort the materials to be sent out, sold and reused. The 107 workers at the Gowan Road plant sort the plastics from the metals and the paper from the glass using magnetic fields and blowers, among other devices, said Republic Services spokeswoman Tracy Skenandore.

Rob Dorinson, area director of business development for Republic Services, said recycling is important because it’s both economically and environmentally sustainable. Recyclable materials are in high demand, he said, so having the materials available could attract businesses to the valley. Besides, he said, recycling centers have to be staffed with workers. The more demand there is, he said, the more jobs there are, he said.

Evergreen Recycling has launched numerous pilot programs throughout the valley that have been successful, said Joe Burkel, area president for the group. The programs feature the ability to throw all recyclable items in one bin, rather than making residents sort them into separate bins for paper, plastic, glass and metals.

“If the recycle bin isn’t right next to the waste bin, you’re not going to get as many people to participate,” Skenandore said.

When you make recycling easier for people, participation increases markedly, Burkel said. In areas where pilot programs were implemented, he said, recycling rates grew to 25 percent from about 3.5 percent.

The goal now is to take care of the “evolving ton,” he said. People aren’t consuming less, but what happens to each ton of garbage they throw away can -- and should -- change with what technologies allow. The idea is to make sure as much material gets recycled as possible, he said, and the high-tech sorting done at the plant is expected to do just that.

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