A recycling partnership brings the University of South Florida St. Petersburg two kinds of green to benefit a charity and the campus.
Kevin Cartmill won’t claim to be an environmentalist. He’s just a good employee.
So in January, when word came down from University of South Florida administrators that USF was going green, the campus custodial superintendent threw himself at the task, even though he wasn’t exactly sure how he was going to go about it.
“I was trying to find somebody that would help me recycle,” he says.
Cartmill, 58, was cruising USF St. Petersburg on his golf cart just a few days later when fate intervened.
Doug Fyvolent flagged him down. Fyvolent is the regional buyer for the locally based Recycling Management Solutions, Inc. He’s been in the commodities-recycling business for about a year.
“You know anybody on this campus who’s interested in recycling?” Fyvolent asked.
“Get on the cart.”
It was the beginning of a beautifying friendship.
St. Petersburg is one of the largest cities in the nation without municipal curbside pickup: Families and business people who want their recycling collected have to contract with a private firm or haul them to the city’s network of recycling drop-off centers.
Mayor Rick Baker has defended his decision not to adopt a recycling program, arguing that curbside pickup is environmentally counterproductive — the fleet of trucks required would create more greenhouse gasses. He said it would cost too much at a time when people are feeling the pinch of rising fuel prices and inflation.
Recycling is a costly proposition. It’s generally cheaper to throw something away. Fyvolent, however, thinks he’s figured out a way not only to make a profit from recycling, but also to give back to his community.
Fyvolent has just delivered a used cardboard baler at a loading dock at USF St. Petersburg. The green metal baler costs about $5,000, and it’s about the size of a closet. It can compact 800 to 1,000 pounds of paper and cardboard into neat little bundles.
The recycling business is all about volume, Fyvolent explained. So if he has a ton of mixed paper, the $90 he can sell it for is hardly worth the effort it takes to bring it to the recyclers. But if he has 50 tons, he’s going to go to some trouble to get it to the recyclers, because he knows there’s about $4,500 in it for him. His challenge then becomes: where can he get 50 tons of recyclables?
That’s where people like Cartmill come into play.
Cartmill estimated that the school generates between 2,500 to 5,000 pounds of cardboard waste each week. As of July 1 Recycling Management Solutions will handle all of USF St. Petersburg’s recyclable waste. The company gave the campus about 100 recycling bins, some of which have been in the dorms since January.
Fyvolent is working with FedEx, Best Western, Eckerd College in St. Petersburg and USF in St. Petersburg, so now he can collect enough recyclables to make it worth his while. He’s also expanding to Fort Myers and Naples. He’s just getting off the ground, but he hopes to recycle 500 tons every month by distributing bins to new clients like USF.
Until now, St Petersburg businesses or organizations have needed to work with different companies to process different recyclables. One might specialize in aluminum while another specializes in glass while the other handles only mixed paper. Fyvolent said he wanted “to bring (these) industries together to create something new.”
What Fyvolent does isn’t much different than when people round up marketable toss-aways. He just does it on a larger scale.
He provides the bins where recyclables are collected in exchange for the cans, glass, paper and cardboard that fill them. He turns around and sells it on the open market to the specialized recyclers.
But Fyvolent felt he needed something more tangible than just “the environment” to convince recyclers to work with him. So he got in touch with the Ronald McDonald House of Tampa Bay, and pledged to donate up to 20 percent of the proceeds from his recyclable sales.
Since January, Recycling Management Solutions has donated $336.87.
Janice Davis, executive director and CEO of Ronald McDonald House of Tampa Bay, noted that the program is just getting started.
“We’re getting a little bit trickling in,” she said, but “it’s going to be quite an impact.” Fyvolent said he hopes to eventually donate $100,000 to the charity every year.
He said he believes that within six months he’ll be on pace to start delivering on that pledge.
With the charity involved, he’s been able to persuade recyclers to give him a slightly better price than normal. The recyclers may reduce their profit margin, but they have more goods to work with and resell, so they make up the difference with volume. Meanwhile, Fyvolent’s clients pay less — and in some cases, pay nothing — to hand off their recycling.
An example: those sodas can tab drop-offs at McDonald’s. Fyvolent buys the tabs from McDonald’s and resells them to a processor. Because of his relationship with the Ronald McDonald House and other recycling companies, he can offer McDonalds a slightly better price for the tabs than they could get themselves.
Along the way, Fyvolent makes some money as the middleman. And a percentage goes to charity.
In theory, everybody wins.
Recycling is just one part of Cartmill’s effort to greenify the campus. His goal is to eventually get Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, LEED, certification for the campus. The U.S. Green Building Council, a nonprofit organization, grants LEED certification to buildings that meet its environmental standards.
But this initiative comes at a time when budgets are being slashed. Cartmill says his campus maintenance budget has been cut by 10 to 11 percent this year.
Fortunately, the new green technologies and products he’s been phasing in, from hand soaps and cleaning chemicals to energy efficient light bulbs, are going to save money.
“Next year, I figure I’m gonna save almost $8,000 on my budget over what I did last year just in the soap. In chemicals, I’m planning on saving myself an additional 13 percent overall,” Cartmill said. And yes, he says the chemicals actually clean.
“We could cut our garbage consumption to the landfills 40 to 70 percent if we recycle everything that we have possible,” he said. “That’s my goal, to recycle everything possible.”
Cartmill thinks he’ll halve his garbage bills simply by recycling his plastic, aluminum, paper and cardboard. There’s more.
“It used to cost every month to have that stuff picked up,” Cartmill said, touching the tip of his index finger to the tip of his thumb to make a circle. “Now it’s gonna cost us ze-ro.”
On a recent day, in the office of USF’s maintenance building, Cartmill and his staff are having fun making labels for the new 96-gallon recycling bins that his crew is about to distribute across campus. He asks Linda Green, an assistant in the office, to draw up the labels.
“Do you know how to spell aluminum?”
“No,” she laughed.
“Well, I just learned yesterday.”
That’s how it’s been going for Cartmill lately.
“We’re learning. I don’t know nowhere what I need to know,” he says. “But I will learn.”
He stresses the fact he’s not taking on this project alone. He wouldn’t even try. He needs his team.
“It takes all these people. One person is not gonna do this,” Cartmill says. “We can make a difference as a department. We can’t make a difference as individuals.”