Recycle, repurpose, reuse

Recycle, repurpose, reuse … is the mantra heard loud and clear from the Kripke Enterprise family.

In keeping with that philosophy, Earth Day, April 22, will be a time for the community to celebrate with them. Kripke is hosting day-long festivities including a live 104.7 WIOT radio broadcast, free lunch, and free prizes. “We are also offering the highest prices of the year to those who bring in their obsolete metal items to recycle,” promised Andy Golding, Kripke’s chief strategy officer.

The company has been open to consumer recycling for the past two years. The public can bring unwanted aluminum, copper, brass and steel items such as porch furniture, cables and wires found in appliances and machines, brass faucets, and much more to receive cash for their recyclable. In fact, a booklet, “Make More Money, Kripke Insider’s Guide to Metal Recycling,” is available at company headquarters to help explain the recycling process. According to Golding, metal items have value. “Recycling keeps those metals out of landfills. People earn cash for the items they bring to recycle. Those items are segregated and sent to mills where they are used to make new items. This is a win for the environment, for the recycler, for us and for the end users,” he said.

“Our business has always been to broker scrap metal and sell it to industries who will reuse and make something else,” noted Golding. “While recycling is about keeping items out of the landfill, it is just as important to have that metal to reuse. There is not enough iron, steel, aluminum and more to make all of the stuff we want.

We have also always been a business to business recycler,” he said. “Seventy percent of all stainless steel and steel products made in the United States are from recycled steel.”
“The first month we began buying metal items from the public, we had 100 people who recycled metals. This past March, we had 1,400 people who stopped by to sell us their unused metal items,” Golding stated. “In the past two years, we have recycled 10 million pounds of metal from the public.”

“When we opened recycling to the public our goal was to elevate the recycling metal experience to the highest level,” Golding emphasized. “Our parking lot is spotless. Everything is clearly marked, making the process easy. Everyone is greeted with a smile. We never give change, we round up to the next dollar when we pay for recycling. Everyone leaves with a piece of Bazooka bubble gum, too.”

Convenient hours for public recycling are Monday through Friday from 8 am to 4:30 pm with a 6:30 pm closing on Wednesday; and Saturday from 8 to 11:30 am. “We want to give people as much opportunity to come here as possible. We also want people to leave here with air in their tires and money in their pockets. Everyone wins when they recycle metals here. The recyclers earn cash, we get much-needed metal that we sell to people who make stuff and, best of all, none of this goes into a landfill!”

Recycle, repurpose, reuse have been every day phrases for Kripke company personnel long before they became popular buzz words and they continue to resound today.