Here at the Island Shell recycling plant, old phone books are turned into items that help protect the environment. Bernie Boltz explains how it works. "First strip off the plastic and the glossy covers. Then we feed it into a grinder that tears the paper into small chunks. It goes through an auger into a blender where we inject a cirfactant and some dye. Then into a second mill that breaks it down even further but leaves the fibers long."
At that point, the finely ground paper is turned into something called hydro-mulch, used by public and private landscapers.
"Hydro-mulch is used for erosion control, dust control and germination seeding. Contractors will fill a big tanker with water, seeds and hydro-mulch and spray it over the ground and the paper will knit down. But it holds a tremendous amount of water and that's what helps the seeds to germinate,” said Boltz.
So where do all these phone books come from that can be turned into something as important as hydro-mulch?
Island Shell pays Lokahi for the books collected by volunteers.
"Lokahi's always believed in recycling things. We take the re-gifts and the gently used items and always try to find a home for everything so it doesn't go to a landfill, so this is a really important project to us,” said co-founder, Mariellen Jones.
The work is not easy - as you might imagine the non-profit is looking for volunteers to help out with projects like this.
"We're always looking for volunteers. We try to do things in the community almost on a weekly or bi-weekly basis so we'll always need volunteers to help us man those efforts,” said Jones.
Besides hydro-mulch, the ground up telephone books also can be turned into an absorbent material for do it yourselfers who change their own motor oil.
Island Shell has sold about 100,000 of these kits for the past 15 years.
