By: Swift Newspapers? Sierra Nevada Group has found that going green can generate green. Several years ago, the group implemented programs for recycling newsprint and aluminum at its Carson City plant, where it produces five dailies and two thrice-weeklies for California and Nevada. The recovery efforts are expected to generate revenues of over $100,000 this year.
Girish Pandit, the group?s operations director, acquired a paper baler to recycle trim from commercial jobs, as well as general office paper, shredded confidential documents, returns, and staff copies. ?Each of our employees gets a free paper at their home.? Pandit says. If they bring their papers back, ?they can be part of [company] recycling.?
Rather than pay the $80,000 for the baler up front, the media group turned all recovered paper proceeds over to the baler?s vendor until the equipment was paid for, which took eleven months. Sierra Nevada Media now has a second baler for cardboard.
The group?s fiber-recovery partner is Fiber Reclaim, a division of its newsprint supplier, Inland Empire Paper Co., in Millwood, Wash. Because the newsprint seller also buys the recovered paper, its trucks carrying rolls to Sierra Nevada Media return with the customer?s bales.
Sierra Nevada Media doesn?t stop at fiber. ?We recycle everything,? Pandit says, from batteries to beverage cans. The former items bring no money, but keep heavy metals out of the general waste stream. The latter are part of a substantial recovery effort where printing plates predominate. Aluminum, like paper, was not at first a moneymaker. Today it pulls in $2,000 per month, on average.
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