Waste management loans, grants help
It ain’t easy being green
– and that’s a lesson West Coast Rubber Recycling Inc. has
learned in the seven years it’s been in business. Its owners have
watched over the years as competitors have folded. But with help
from the California Integrated Waste Management Board and local
recycling market development zones, the smal
l business has been able to outgrow their growing pains.
Waste management loans, grants help
It ain’t easy being green – and that’s a lesson West Coast Rubber Recycling Inc. has learned in the seven years it’s been in business. Its owners have watched over the years as competitors have folded. But with help from the California Integrated Waste Management Board and local recycling market development zones, the small business has been able to outgrow their growing pains.
“We were interested in being a green company,” said Cameron Wright, a partner of West Coast Rubber Recycling, of the initial venture in 1999. “We wanted to divert things from the waste stream.”
A new venture with a Morgan Hill bicycle company is a perfect example of what the company does best. Specialized Bicycle set up a deal with the company to recycle bike tires and inner tubes. The first box of tires arrived recently and soon the deflated rubber will be turned into small, black chunks. Then West Coast Rubber Recycling employees will buff the rubber into doormats with the Specialized logo for bike shops.
Owners Wright and Gary Kerr are settling into a 16,000 square foot warehouse in Hollister where they have high hopes of someday being a zero-waste manufacturer. For now, the duo does a good job of transforming used tire rubber into useable products with just a little waste left over for landfills.
San Benito is part of a recycling market development zone, an area of California that offers low-interest loans and grants to recycling companies. The zone designation offered promise for expanding the company that Wright and Kerr knew would never happen in Gilroy. The city is not part of an RMDZ.
With a loan through the market development zone, Wright and Kerr have quadrupled the size of the space they had at their former location. With grants, they have been able to buy more equipment to chop, grind or buff the rubber they get from used tires into different products.
“The machinery is expensive,” Wright said,” pointing to a green shredder and conveyor belt that reached nearly to the ceiling of the warehouse. “Waste management has given us grant money with the idea that we will divert more from the waste stream.”
With a recent grant, Wright and Kerr purchased used equipment at an auction. They weren’t able to use some of their new machinery at their Gilroy facility because it was too small.
Kerr owned a tire and brake business when he first hit on the idea of recycling tires. With Wright’s background in marketing, the two found they could easily grind up tire rubber to be used in other products. The black, rubber shards and chunks are used to make the pour-in rubber used at horse arenas or for ground surface in outdoor children’s play areas. The products are sold throughout California and the western states.
The main by-product that is unusable at West Coast Rubber Recycling is the steel that is separated by magnets from the rubber fragments. While there are machines that could process the steel, the company has not been able to purchase one yet due to the high cost of the machine. All the tires that come into the shop are not useable. Racing tires and some temporary tires contain fiberglass that cannot be safely removed. Other tires have too little rubber to make it worthwhile to chop them up.
The tires recycled at the local plant come from all over the bay area. They collect used tires from stores, tire collection sites and some landfills.
“We collect from King City to San Francisco to the East Bay,” Wright said. “Many landfills can’t keep [used tires] until they have been altered.”
The company has a contract with several local landfills, including the John Smith Road Landfill in Hollister and the Buena Vista Landfill in Watsonville. Two semi-trucks and four vans collect the tires from around the bay area.
While they are still setting up some of their equipment and have hopes to continue expanding the business, the company has 25 employees and a backorder on their products.
The plant processes as many as 2,000 tires a day and Wright said their production should triple when they have all their equipment running in a month.
“Each trailer holds about 600 tires,” Wright said. “It takes about 275 tires to make one ton of material. All of that would be in landfills.”
Melissa Flores can be reached at [email protected].
