PLASTICS RECYCLING CENTER OPENS

Easy access to and from Interstate 55 and Route 72, and the fact that railroads are nearby, helped determine Lucent Recycling of Missouri Inc.'s decision to locate a plastics recycling center on Highway 61 North.

The business opened in June in a 10,000-square-foot facility formerly known as the "old egg plant" -- a poultry breeding building.

Now, instead of chirps and feathers filling the air, the drone of trucks and forklift reverberate at five loading docks and spill onto 15 adjacent acres that would be used for expansion.

"We looked at several locations for the business," said Tamara Baremore, operations director and a partner in the company. "The lanes of transportation and the fact that the city is growing and is positive toward business were factors in our decision."

Lucent Recycling employs three people on one shift and six more employees, and possibly a second shift, are expected within a year.

The business responds to the growing demand for recovery of post-industrial scrap plastics driven by the interest of original equipment manufacturers.

Lucent helps recover higher value materials in the area of engineering resins for re-introduction of the resins into various applications.

Customers include manufacturers in such areas as injection molding, extrusion, thermoformers, rotational molders, film and sheet makers, blow molders -- essentially any plant that generates a plastic waste stream via its internal processes.

Some of the products recycled from these industries are electronics, computers, business machines, telecommunications, automotive, appliances, lawn and garden, industrial, sporting and agricultural.

Baremore says Lucent has not only regional customers but clients in such states as Texas, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and North Carolina.

Lucent picks up recyclable plastics and transports the plastics to Jackson where they are baled. Currently, between 30,000 and 40,000 pounds of plastics are processed daily.

"That's quite a lot," said Baremore, who has been in the plastics recycling business 10 years, the past five as a distributor of product. "And our capacity will increase as our equipment purchases increase."

Baremore said the company plans to buy a grinder to work in conjunction with the baler. A grinder will convert the plastics -- which come in all shapes and forms from car speaker panels to kitty litter bottles -- into regrind.

Lucent ships its product, called feedstocks, to companies that either re-mold it for their own uses, or to companies that export it.

"Recycling is an important issue today with environmental advocates pressuring processors to reuse all the plastics waste produced, or dispose of it in a manner other than landfills," Baremore said.

The partnership of processor and recycling company, says Baremore, represents an evolutionary change in the structure of the plastics industry.