Chesterfield landfill is latest job creator
Add garbage worker and nutritional supplement maker to the list of new career opportunities announced this week in Chesterfield County.
The Shoosmith Brothers landfill joined a nearly weeklong parade of capital investment and job creation in Chesterfield, unveiling on Wednesday morning a recycling center that will divert 100 tons to 200 tons a day of waste out of the landfill and ultimately back into the consumer market. It will employ about 30 people.
Gov. Bob McDonnell also announced Wednesday that Chesterfield will be home to a $1 million distribution center for Emerson Ecologies. The company makes nutritional supplements for the health-care market. Its facility could employ up to 60 people.
The recipient of the Shoosmith waste will be Sonoco Recycling, an international paper goods company that has long pioneered reuse efforts. It has a facility about 12 miles from the Shoosmith landfill.
"People used to think of cradle-to-grave," said Ray Howard, the director of operations for Sonoco. "This is cradle to cradle."
He said consumer products made with recycled paper, such as the Pringles cans Sonoco manufactures, that once wound up in landfills will be recycled again and put back to use.
"I used to be anti-recycling, but I'm born again," said Fletcher Kelly, a co-owner of Shoosmith.
He said the fact that Shoosmith will make money on the project — he didn't say how much — changed his mind.
He said that with increased recycling efforts, particularly in the Northeast, landfill loads are projected to decrease in coming years.
"For us to stay viable, we had to diversify," he said. "We had to find a way to stay sustainable."
The landfill on Iron Bridge Road takes in about 5,000 tons a day, including 3,500 tons of waste. The rest is non-waste material, such as the dirt required to coat each day's collection with 6 inches of soil.
The recyclable material will come from the loads of waste already being accepted at the landfill, Kelly said. When trucks pull into the lot, an employee at the scales will determine if the load is likely to contain sufficient material. If so, the truck will be diverted to the recycling center, where the load will be sorted by hand.
The landfill takes in about 1 million tons of waste a year and has 40-plus years of life expectancy, Kelly said.
New Hampshire-based Emerson Ecologies LLC distributes more than 20,000 health-care products from hundreds of industry-leading manufacturers.
"The Richmond area was selected for our new Eastern distribution center based on many factors, including the ability to reach a majority of our East and Midwest doctors via small parcel ground shipping in two days," CEO Andy Greenawalt said.
The company will hire 35 workers immediately and grow to as many as 60 within three years.
The Shoosmith and Emerson projects were the third and fourth major jobs-related developments in Chesterfield this week, following projects involving the groundbreaking for an aquatics center and the announcement of a large entertainment complex. They total about $37 million in investment and 260 jobs.
"This is a very big day for us," said County Administrator James J.L. Stegmaier.
Copyright Richmond Times-Dispatch. Used by permission.
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