Christopher Bielser gets a good sense what's going in the northern Nevada economy as he watches trucks dump loads of trash onto the floor of Green Solutions Recycling in Reno.
A few days ago, for instance, employees of Green Solutions were busily pulling metal drywall studs out of loads of trash a sure sign that commercial remodeling and tenant improvement projects are under way around the region.
The business model at Green Solutions is as simple as they come:
The company charges commercial clients and only commercial clients $8.75 a cubic yard to dump trash inside Green Solutions' facility just outside the southeast edge of the Reno-Tahoe International Airport.
Employees of the company sort through the trash, pulling out and stacking marketable recyclables such as metal, cardboard, plastic and unpainted wood.
Bielser, vice president and managing director of Green Solutions, works the phones to find markets for the recyclables.
The rest of the trash the 40 to 70 percent that can't be recycled gets loaded into a truck for delivery to Waste Management's landfill at Lockwood.
The more of the trash that Green Solutions can recycle, the more revenues it generates. And as the amount of recycling goes up, the company's cost of dumping at the landfill go down.
But a simple business isn't necessarily an easy business, says William Bielser, the company's president and father of Christopher Bielser.
"It's a dirty business," he acknowledges. Even though the company doesn't accept food refuse or wet garbage, the smell inside its enclosed sorting facility is powerful.
While the Bielsers someday hope to create a mechanical system for sorting recyclables, the company's 11 employees today pull material out of stacks by hand.
Adding to the workers' motivation: Anything they find that the company can't recycle is theirs to keep. Among the finds are a steady stream of bicycles, apparel dumped by department stores and plenty of power tools.
In fact, Christopher Bielser points to the landscaping at the facility's truck entrance and notes that every bit of it sod, bushes, rocks was reclaimed from loads delivered to Green Solutions.
Even the safety vests that Bielser provides to visitors have been reclaimed from boxes found in a load of trash.
But the Christmas-morning spirit that animates the business everyone wonders what surprises the next load of trash may bring has added substantially to the uncertainty of managing Green Solutions since it was founded in 2005.
William Bielser says the company handles 75 to 100 truckloads of material most days. But the number can vary widely, and no one has any idea what kinds of material will arrive in each truckload.
"The only thing certain about this business is the uncertainty," says William Bielser.
And the volume of trash handled at the recycling facility has declined by about 40 percent from the onset of the recession, largely because of a reduced flow of construction material.
On the other side of the equation, the prices the company receives for recycled commodities shift nearly constantly. Bales of used plastic shrink wrap are a hot commodity on world markets these days.
So is cardboard. Wood? Not so much since closure of a Sierra Pacific Industries plant near Loyalton that generated electricity from biomass.
AnneMarie Carey, who handles sales for Green Solution Recycling, says a substantial number of customers are drawn by the potential for savings compared with the cost of hauling and dumping trash at the Lockwood landfill.
But many, she says, are equally motivated by the desire to do the right thing for the environment. And builders who hope to earn LEED certification for environmentally sustainable projects rely on Green Solutions recycling.
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