Las Vegas resorts recycle their fair share

Steve Kanigher and Stacy J. Willis

Saturday, Aug. 26, 2000 | 4:13 a.m.

A Southern Nevada Water Authority employee who researched hotel recycling while attending UNLV said the resorts "certainly do a commendable job" but were inconsistent in their record-keeping.

As Darlene Cartier discovered, some hotels kept recycling records based on tons while some measured by square yard. Others said they recycled but kept no records.

"All they know is that the stuff is sorted on their docks," Cartier said. "But the hotels probably contribute more toward recycling goals than do residents."

About 75 percent of all major resorts in Las Vegas participate in some form of recycling, according to Clint Combs, president of the Nevada Recyclers Association.

Most of that material is collected by Republic Services of Southern Nevada and Waste Management Inc., a subsidiary of R.C. Farms in North Las Vegas, where Combs is an executive.

The farm gets enough food waste from about 120 eating establishments, including resorts, to feed 6,000 pigs 30 tons of food a day.

No one knows how much of the 211,601 tons of municipal solid waste recycled in Clark County last year came from the resort industry.

But among those companies that keep specific records is Boyd Gaming Corp., whose properties include the Stardust and Sam's Town. The company's Southern Nevada properties combined last year to recycle 451.5 tons of cardboard, 153.5 tons of glass and 32.5 tons of plastic.

"We want to do our part," Boyd spokesman Rob Stillwell said. "This is a community that the Boyd family has been a part of since the very beginning."

Harrah's Las Vegas in 1999 recycled nearly 432 tons of tin cans, cardboard, plastics, bottles and computer paper. Harrah's spokesman Phil Levine said the resort each month also recovers about $5,000 worth of linens, glassware, dishes and silverware that were inadvertently discarded.

Cartier said many other hotels also find that sorting recyclables enables them to recoup thousands of dollars a month in silverware, dishes and other valuables that were erroneously thrown away by employees and guests.

Cartier, who runs the residential conservation program for the water authority, prepared the only known hotel recycling study for an undergraduate thesis at UNLV.

Among her 1997 findings: