Iola Rotary Club paper drives have led to recycling of almost 500,000 pounds of newspapers and magazines in the last five years through Central Fiber, Wellsville.
Tim Russell, plant manager, told Rotarians Thursday the company recycles about 100,000 pounds of paper a day, converting it to insulation, industrial fiber and erosion control material. The plant has capacity to process more than 200,000 pounds a day.
Insulation, with fire retardant added, often is used in older houses and is blown into walls and above ceilings.
Industrial fiber finds its way into everyday use as binding material for chalking, paint, felt paper and asphalt. Much of the material is beings sold in Texas, Russell noted, where it is added to asphalt.
Fiber also is sold in Mexico and Central American countries, where it is radiated and then used as bedding and in other associations with livestock to eradicate screw worms, whose larvae (maggots) eat the flesh of warm-blooded animals. Screw worms mainly are found in the tropics.
Paper recycled into fiber also goes to control erosion along newly constructed highways and at landfills.
Allen County cooperates with Iola Rotarians by furnishing four highway transport trailers, filled here and taken to Wellsville by county trucks. The county returns with erosion-control fiber for use at its landfill.
Russell pointed out that a half inch of slurry made with the fiber — with the consistency of runny oatmeal — did the same as six inches of dirt in covering the landfill waste. It is sprayed over the top of the landfill.
“That adds another 5½ inches of space to the landfill each day,” he said.
The second advantage to the county is keeping space-consuming paper out of the landfill.
Central Fiber pays $70 a ton for paper, a price that has been stable for about four years, Russell said. That puts money in pockets of non-profit groups in Allen County. The local paper drives are about every six weeks and draw from a wide area, including churches and organizations that pick up bundles from individual households. Participants are asked to bundle their papers in paper sacks; for magazines and catalogs the sacks should be double-sacked.
The plant draws raw material from a wide area.
“We get paper from Dallas, St. Louis, Nebraska, Oklahoma” and all points between, Russell said.
To date the plant has been able to meet demand, and at times has an abundance of paper, which “is much better than having too little,” Russell observed.
The company also has plants in Tyler, Texas, and Canton, Ohio.
