Largest residential recycling center coming to NLV
The home of the nation’s largest landfill will soon welcome the country’s largest residential recycling center.
Republic Services, a for-profit waste management company, will break ground Thursday for a new 110,000-square-foot recycling center.
The Southern Nevada Recycling Complex will be in North Las Vegas at the corner of Cheyenne Avenue and Commerce Street.
Republic Services, owner of the Apex landfill about 20 miles north of Las Vegas, anticipates the complex will double Clark County’s recycling capability.
Everything is “full-speed ahead” from a land development approval and permit perspective, North Las Vegas Community Development and Compliance Director Greg Blackburn said.
Blackburn said the facility will be state-of-the-art, and although the numbers haven’t been crunched, any time there’s a new processing facility like this it translates into more jobs.
“We’re always open for business and helping businesses expand, so that’s exciting,” Blackburn said.
Republic Services declined to comment for this story.
In 1991, Nevada set a goal of recycling 25 percent of municipal waste. Nevada first hit this aim, which was written into state law, in 2011.
As recently as 2009, the recycling rate for all of the county was 17.4 percent. That’s improved beyond Nevada’s benchmark. In 2012, the rate was 27.5 percent, with the statewide number being 28.8 percent.
Still, the numbers lag behind the nationwide recycling rate of 34.5 percent.
Republic Services has previously said if single-stream recycling, where reusables can be placed into one container, went valleywide, it would cut the Apex landfill’s volume by 25 percent.
Contact Bethany Barnes at bbarnes@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861. Find her on Twitter: @betsbarnes.
