A Word About Recycling with Ollie Maier

Several years ago, I mentioned that some of the recycled plastic, unusable for other purposes, was being used in making composite railroad ties. That was good news to me, as such ties not only are a good use for such plastic but also the ties last much longer than wooden ties. I tried to check with Burlington-Northern at the time to see if any such ties were being used in our area. They informed me they couldn’t as it was a trade secret.

Now, a recent article in the recent Resource Recycling newsletter caught my attention as it talks again about such composite railroad ties. The article featured a Louisiana manufacturer of composite rail ties and a consumer of mixed plastic bales from residential and commercial recycling programs. This company uses from 25 million to 35 million pounds of recovered plastic each year in its 145,000-square-foot building. In my opinion, that's a very good use for such plastic since China stopped importing most recycled plastic.

The company not only makes composite railroad ties, but also construction matting using such recycled plastic. It is studying also using it on parking bumpers and fence posts. They receive the bales of number 3-7 recycled plastics from material recovery facilities and also bales of mixed residential plastic (MRP). They want to assure the folks who recycle the MRP that it is being put to very good use and they can use all they can get.

From an energy consumption standpoint, the company has a very efficient process: It captures the heat generated solely by friction in their machines to melt the plastic to put into molds.

I found the company has plans to increase production from making 100,000 composite railroad ties each year to making one million every year within the next five years. In order to do so, it will require building a second plant. Locations for such a plant is being studied. Although that will also require more recycled plastic, they believe as long as they offer a fair price for the material, they can still sell the products at a fair price, making it a win-win situation.

They believe there will be ample materials available since recycling collectors such as Waste Management and Republic are investing more money on recycling. Thus the availability of material should not be a problem. However, one of the problems they are already experiencing is the cost of transporting the collected materials to them. At one time, they could take material from the East Coast with no problem, but now with the transportation rates two or three times as much as they were just 18 months ago, material from there is no longer an option. This means they will be looking at getting more from surrounding states — Texas, hopefully.

Switching subjects to another item cans, worth more than $800 million,

Till next week, do have a great one...

--Ollie is a local citizen concerned with the environment and helping others. A retired Air Force fighter and instructor pilot, he is a graduate of Leadership San Marcos and received his degrees at Texas State University where he worked on staff before totally retiring. For questions or comments, he invites you to call him at 512-353-7432 or email omaier@txstate.edu.