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Youngstown: Where the Rubber Meets the Recycler
"By George NelsonYOUNGSTOWN. Ohio -- Council presidents in three Mahoning County cities want to build on a new tire recycling operation in Youngstown by establishing a center for training technicians to deal with scrap tires.At a downtown news conference Wednesday morning, the council presidents from Youngstown, Struthers and Campbell joined with the principles of RRI of Ohio Inc., which plans to restart operations in March in a former scrap tire processing plant on Brittain Street in Youngstown. Recycled Resources of Pennsylvania Inc. purchased the facility in May 2003 and worked with the Youngstown Area Development Corp. and Presley Gillespie, vice president of commercial lending at Sky Bank, to line up financing, said Mark Lewis, RRI of Ohio president. RRI, which is receiving $60,000 in public assistance for the project, is investing another $759,000 in renovations and new equipment at the plant, including just over $600,000 in financing from Sky.Lewis, who previously worked in public accounting for such firms as Price Waterhouse and Ernst & Young, said scrap tires can simply be shredded for use by various industrial customers -- the material is being used in road construction, for instance -- or go through a more complicated process to create a finer material. Crumb rubber generated is used in football fields, he added. "This is really an endless commodity -- or actually an endless, hazardous material, to put it bluntly -- that exists not only in Youngstown but all across the country," Lewis explained. Youngstown City Council President James Fortune noted that tire recycling "needs a lot of attention" particularly in cities like Youngstown. "We get an awful lot of tires dumped,here " he said, adding that people don't realize the subsequent problems created by mosquitoes who make their homes in tires with standing water. "A lot of our tires have to go to our street department -- that's the only place we have to dump them -- then we have to pay a pretty good sum of money to get those tires recycled and out of our area," Fortune said.Lewis said the company plans to employ between 15 and 20 workers earring $8-$9 per hour. However, employment could be higher, he added. "Fifteen people is really looking at one processing line and one shift," he explained. "Based on some of the estimated customer demands we're going to have, we're already looking at moving to two shifts maybe three shifts, and additional product lines." with each additional shift or line needing another five to seven employees. "So it's really just limited to how fast we can secure those customers and those long term contracts," he said. Fortune was bullish on the company's prospects. "This is a very, very big opportunity for us to work with a minority company that could grow to be a Fortune 500 company very rapidly with the recycling business the way it is now especially across the country," he remarked. "I don't know about Fortune 500, but we plan to be a big player in Youngstown," Lewis responded. He later added, "That's a goal we won't turn away.Fortune and his colleagues Robert D. Carcelli of Struthers and Robert P. Yankle of Campbell, representing the Coalition of City Council Presidents, also announced plans for an operation that could not only compliment RRI but establish the Mahoning Valley as a recycling center. The council presidents said they will seek federal and state assistance to establish a national scrap tire training institute in Mahoning County. The center would train technicians to recycle scrap tires. Carcelli said money generated from tipping fees for tires dropped off at the center could be re-invested into the Mahoning River Corridor. "What has held back the Mahoning Valley and Mahoning County to this point is we've never had a development fund set up in house so we were able to go after state and federal grants" Carcelli said. "This is a very viable program." Carcelli also said that other companies that use the scrap products generated by RRI have expressed interest in coming to the area. "We plan on dealing with other products that deal in waste minimunization where you will then cultivate an anti-recession, depression-proof industry for this valley that will create jobs," he said. Contact George Nelson at [email protected]"