Who Says PVC Can't Be Recycled? An interview with Tom Franzen, Plant Manager Specified Fittings, Inc.

摘要

Author's Preface: The content of this paper comes directly from an interview I had with Tom Franzen. The question-and-answer format of the interview lent itself to writing the article in first person, from Mr. Franzen's point-of-view. That literary license was taken to make the article more readable.Scrap is a fact of life when one is a manufacturer of fabricated plastic fittings. When Specified first began, its available financial resources were focused on the purchase of fitting manufacturing equipment, modifying the facilities to better suit our needs, and all the other countless items that go into getting an operation like ours off the ground. At the time, the funds just were not available to purchase the additional equipment we needed to pursue the recycling of our scrap. That is no longer the case. Specified Fittings has a very healthy and economically viable recycling program in place. Since the program began, we have processed between 3.5 and 4.0 million pounds of scrap, which we shipped to our recycling broker, Plastic Industries, of Preston, Idaho. The investment in the recycling equipment was paid back within months. Having paid off the equipment, the program's profits now go straight to the bottom line.