Monday, June 27, 2005 | 11:03 a.m.
McCarran International Airport, with more than 1,000 employees and nearly 4 million people moving through it monthly, is a small city, and like a lot of cities it is pushing recycling as an environmentally friendly way to save money.
The airport, operated by the Clark County Aviation Department, has actually been in the recycling business for years, but it wasn't until earlier this year that a committee formed to look at what is being done already and what could be done in the future, department officials said.
"We realized we were doing a heck of a lot more than we thought," said Elaine Sanchez, airport spokeswoman. Last year, the airport collected more than 450,000 pounds of various items for recycling.
That includes about 135 tons of cardboard, or about 11 tons of cardboard a month, according to airport records. The total weight of cardboard is equal to three of the Boeing 737 that carry passengers to and from McCarran.
In other efforts last year, the airport recycled:
In some cases, the airport has teamed up with other groups to maximize its recycling. Opportunity Village, a non-profit group that works with people in Southern Nevada with intellectual disabilities, helped distribute bins for collecting shredded paper, and collected 19,000 pounds of the material last year.
The Make A Wish Foundation collected and recycled 250 used toner cartridges from printers, which the group sold to provide funds for its programs.
Office supplies that McCarran no longer needs or can use are donated to the Clark County School District. The school district also received 23 surplus metal detectors for use at high schools throughout the Las Vegas Valley.
Randy Walker, Aviation Department director, said the metal detectors no longer meet the standards needed for McCarran's security efforts, but they could help bolster the security measures in community schools.
"That just makes a lot of sense," he said. "To the extent that they can be reused, that's a good thing."
Airport officials hope to do what Clark County generally has found to be difficult. Clark County has long fallen short of a statewide goal set in 1991 to recycle 25 percent of its trash by 1996. By late last year, Clark County and Nevada had barely broken the 10 percent mark compared with 30 percent nationwide.
Sanchez said the airport can't put a number on its recycling percentage right now, but that could change.
"The recycling effort is an evolving effort and it's multifaceted," she said. "It's not limited to the typical things that people usually think of, glass and paper and aluminum, although those are part of it too.
"We are trying to do the most we can with everything we can."
In some cases, the airport believes that the recycling effort has been more than just kind to the environment. It also is saving money for the airport.
McCarran participates in a carpet-recycling program in which old but salvageable square yards of carpet are taken up and sent back to Milliken Carpets, a Georgia company. Milliken super-cleans the carpets and reprints the pattern and sends them back.
Ralph LePore, McCarran assistant director of terminal operations, said the recycled carpet squares cost about half of what a new square would cost. New squares of carpet cost $44 each. The recycled ones, even with shipping factored in, cost about $24.
The process is beginning; as old carpet wears out, squares are being sent to the factory for reconditioning. Eventually, LePore said, the hope is to have enough stock of the recycled carpet squares to use those instead of new carpet.
LePore said the process could almost cut in half the $225,000 the airport spends annually for carpet replacement.
Airport officials hope that drawing attention to the recycling programs will help people find more opportunities for recycling.
"We've got a lot of good ideas coming from rank-and-file employees every day," Walker said. "We're a huge place, and we have a lot of volume of stuff. Not throwing away good stuff is something we can do. And some stuff, like used oil and old batteries, you have to take care of that in an environmentally friendly fashion."
The effort will deepen, he said. The next phase of the recycling effort will be requests to the tenants and concession holders throughout the airport to contribute what they can to the recycling program.
Many of those companies already recycle, so it should not be difficult to bring them into the program, Walker said. While the program expands into the public areas, passengers arriving at or leaving Las Vegas should eventually become a part of the effort.
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