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North Lima company brings new life to recyclable items

Published: Wed, September 12, 2012 @ 12:01 a.m.




A local assembly line sorts and bales recyclable materials collected from Northeast Ohio recycling bins and sends them to processors that will give them a new life.

Associated Paper Stock Inc., 11510 South Ave. Ext., established a materials recovery facility, supplementing its own investment of more than

$1 million with a $250,000 grant it received in 2006 from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

The MRF is divided into two streams — one for recycled paper, including newspaper, magazines and cardboard; and the other for nonpaper items, including metal food and beverage cans, glass bottles and plastic containers.

“It’s very much of a state-of-the-art line that they have. They’ve created jobs, which is great for the economy,” said Jim Petuch, director of the Mahoning County recycling division. The North Lima company has 56 employees.

“Anything that’s staying out of a landfill is not getting burned or not getting buried; it’s getting turned back into some kind of end use,” said Mike E. Aey Jr., director of purchasing and marketing of recyclable materials for the North Lima company.

“Recycling facilities, whether they’re ours or anybody else’s across the nation, need to be utilized. You need to keep as much material out of the landfill as you can,” he said.

“We try to keep as much of our recycled material [as possible] going to Ohio end-users,” he added. “We do our best to keep it in Ohio first. Second, we do our best to keep it in the United States.”

Half or more of the cardboard processed by AP goes to Massillon or Coshocton paper mills, Aey said. “Our newspaper goes to paper mills in Toronto, Ohio. As much plastic as possible stays in Ohio,” he said. All metals AP processes stay in the state, he added.

Nonpaper items arriving at the MRF enter a bag-breaker, which breaks apart the plastic bags, in which the cans, glass bottles and plastic containers are often encased.

After that, the recyclables are placed on an elevated conveyor belt, where workers along the sorting line pick up recyclables and drop them into the appropriate bins, with only nonrecyclable garbage dropping off the end of the conveyor belt into a landfill-bound trash receptacle.

The recyclables are collected from each bin, compacted into bales weighing between 1,100 and 2,000 pounds at the MRF, and sent to processing centers, where they are given a new use.

Cans are sold to a Columbus company that melts aluminum cans to be turned back into new cans and melts down steel and tin cans to make steel coil.

The many types of plastics have a variety of reuses, including new plastic bottles and lids, flower pots, toys, strapping and the polyester fiber used to make carpet, clothing and furniture. Plastic grocery bags become benches and lumber decking.

The newspaper passing through AP is made by the Toronto, Ohio, processor into rolls from which pizza boxes are made. Office paper goes to a Middletown, Ohio, processor, to be recycled into more office paper.

The glass bottles go to a Cleveland company that grinds the glass into the pellets contained in roof shingles. Glass can also be melted down and blown into new glass products, Aey said.

Aluminum-can recycling is the most profitable category, but “glass is a big money loser” for recyclers, Aey said. “The paper market fluctuates drastically.”

AP was founded in 1974 by its president, Thomas Yanko of Poland, as a cardboard recycler, and it remains active in that business.

Associated Paper Stock is one of the largest recyclers of corrugated cardboard in the Midwest, collecting large amounts of empty cardboard boxes from major Ohio retail stores and sending the baled cardboard to mills to be turned into new cardboard boxes.

Aside from its regular assembly line operation, AP also shreds office paper and grinds plastic into pellets for manufacture into other plastic items.

AP also collects broken or unwanted electronic items and sends them to a processor in Lorain, which deconstructs them for recycling of their components.


1georgejeanie(722 comments)posted 1 year, 6 months ago

If glass is a big loser, why doesn' the government just ban glass containers. They have their nose in everything else. That way compaines that recycle might not need a $250,000 grant. I'm sure we could warehouse glass at a glass landfill, and mine it later when a process is developed which would make it profitable to mine the glass.

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2Ianacek(828 comments)posted 1 year, 6 months ago

This sounds like another subsidy of an inefficient local operation .

Why should a subsidy be necessary ? What is seen is jobs gained . What is not seen is jobs lost when the $250,000 cannot be spent on other things by (a) taxpayers individualy from whom the $250,000 is taken , or (b) by governments.

“We do our best to keep it in Ohio first. Second, we do our best to keep it in the United States.” This seems a strange comment . Why should recyclables be any different from other resources ? Why does the market for their sale need to be restricted to Ohio ? Why can't Ohio have an export industry in recyclables ? Having to accept a lower local price for their recycables is a cost to Ohio households .

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3AcctNobody(1 comment)posted 1 year, 6 months ago


If it stays in Ohio, then people who live in Ohio, and locally can process it and so that means jobs stay in ohio. Stupid.

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4UsuallyBlunt(105 comments)posted 1 year, 6 months ago

56 employees...how many earn a "living" wage ?

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5zebratank2006(16 comments)posted 1 year, 6 months ago


Are you serious? You should read your comments out loud before you post them so you can hear how dumb it sounds.

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6JoeFromHubbard(822 comments)posted 1 year, 6 months ago

I wish them luck with their new venture.

That said, this sort of operation has been tried many times before but seems to have been short lived in each occasion.

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7Ianacek(828 comments)posted 1 year, 6 months ago

Ricardo's "law of comparative advantage" in economics . On whatever level ( individual , company, state or country ) , says specialisation in each party's most efficient occupation & trade increases standard of living for all participants . Most of individually aren't "jacks of all trades" & neither is it rational for states to be .

If Ohio has a comparative advantage in recycling , plants should be springing up everywhere, without subsidies , to process material from other states .

The steel companies of Youngstown's heyday understood comparative advantage well. The high standard of living in the Valley in the day was built on exports .

I can understand if people don't want to send their recylables to China , so long as they understand higher taxes & lower living standards are the result .

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8thinkthentalk(253 comments)posted 1 year, 6 months ago

mmm, that grant from OHIO Dept of Natural Resources. So its coming from Kasich, not Obama? So that $250k that my grandkids have to pay back is from Kasich? Sounds like socialism to me. Kasich is a socialist.

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9JoeFromHubbard(822 comments)posted 1 year, 6 months ago

@ Ianacek:

Good point about exporting recyclables.

I wonder if their value would make overseas export profitable. We'll let the market answer that question.

It's difficult enough to "export" even across state lines in this country where no one wants the business in their back yard all of the while crying for jobs.

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10thinkthentalk(253 comments)posted 1 year, 6 months ago

If that money came from washington, all the rushbo neo-con sheep would be cutting and pasting all the typical tea party line. Hannity would be beating it to death tonite...

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11JoeFromHubbard(822 comments)posted 1 year, 6 months ago

@ thinkthentalk:

Now, don't have a coronary...it's the same kind of money whether from Washington or Columbus...it came from tax payers. It all depends upon how generous you feel about its being used in this manner.

Personally, I don't have a problem with the state making a loan which must be paid back, with interest.

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12JoeFromHubbard(822 comments)posted 1 year, 6 months ago

I have no problem with a loan from government if it is successfully repaid.

Obama demonstrates inherent socialist tendencies. That is of grave concern for the future of this country.

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