Township, county and state leaders broke ground to welcome Greenstar North America to the Valley. America's fastest growing recycler is set to build a 20,000-square-foot materials recovery facility in the hills next to Carbon Limestone Landfill in Poland Township.
"Our sole activity is recycling activities, or resource recovery activities.", said Steve Dunn, president of the Eastern Region of Greenstar North America.
A $250,000 state grant secured by the Mahoning County Green Team will be matched by Greenstar to buy equipment to accept, sort and process bottles, cans, newspaper and cardboard from homes and businesses.
So starting next summer, recyclables from all the bins throughout Mahoning County, curbside pick-up, even as far away as Lawrence County, Pa., will come to the new facility. Right now, everything collected in the region is sent off to be processed in Pittsburgh.
"This area collects as much material and has as many households as the city of Pittsburgh, so it's a incredible recycling effort," said Dunn.
"Our recycling program is one of the best in the state, if not number one in the state, we have over 90,000 households that get free curbside recycling. That is tremendous.", added Anthony Traficanti, president of the Mahoning County Board of Commissioners.
The MRF will create 10 to 12 jobs to start,and there's a potential to expand in both size and staff.
"The whole program allows for a doubling in capacity of it in the next couple years," said Mike Heher, division manager of Carbon Limestone Landfill, a division of Republic Services.
Construction will start soon; the facility must be up and running by June 30, 2010, as a condition of the grant funds.
