But for Nalley's Fine Foods Inc., recycling pickles, potato chips and peanut butter is an opportunity to save money and generate new business. Nalley's four food-processing plants generate over 10,000 tons of various animal, vegetable and mineral wastes each year, but the company manages to recycle or reuse 80 percent of that waste. Nalley's goes further than just recycling organic waste. The company operates a full-time recycling warehouse manned by Leon Hembry, whose salary is paid from the savings he achieves by recycling and selling all sorts of containers, packaging, buckets and barrels. Through Hembry's contacts and a computerized bulletin board, he has managed to develop a unique client base.
Customers use the materials for building anything from birdhouses to steel frames.
Under the guidance of Bob O'Neal, an independent environmental consultant, Nalley's continually looks for new ways to recycle. For example, last summer more than a thousand cases of food products were damaged. In the old days, the company would have shipped the goods to a landfill at a hefty expense. But Hembry and O'Neal did some calculating and found Nalley's would save money by recycling the cases. So the pickles and other food products were composted at Lloyd's Enterprises, a Milton topsoil company.