Virginia Business Finds Niche in Recycling Vinyl Siding

Arlington, VA - After a plastic recycling company in Burlington, N.C., went out of business in the late 1990s, one determined employee with entrepreneurial spirit decided to continue the recycling of vinyl himself.

Two years later, the new company's annual recycling output is more than two million pounds, 97 percent of which is returned to the manufacturing process.

Assisted by a grant from the Vinyl Institute and loans from private sources, Kevin Reily purchased recycling equipment in early 1999 and established Reily Recovery Systems (RRS) in Sanford, N.C. Since then, the vinyl siding recycling center has served mobile home manufacturers and major area building contractors and distributors.

Reily refers to the company's initiative in which RRS supplies collection cages to vinyl siding users for separating and collecting their vinyl scrap. The vinyl scrap is then brought to the facility, where it is sorted and ground to 3/8-inch pieces. In a closed-loop process, the vinyl is recycled, boxed and sold to manufacturers who use it to produce new PVC pipe, mobile home skirting and other vinyl products.

"I want to continue upgrading the quality of the equipment RRS is using. I've invested in a wash line that will eventually allow the company to provide more versatile recycling services to our customers," said Reily. The company also has gradually expanded the operations to include other vinyl building products as well as flexible packaging in its recycling process.

In addition to the grinding plant in Sanford, Reily contracted with a baling facility in Douglas, Ga. This allows RRS to serve its customer base in Georgia and to bring bale material from other East Coast states for processing at the North Carolina facility.