2019年9月11日
“When I first started at Adirondack Plastics, a normal truckload (of recycled plastic) was 20-30 percent higher in value than what it was when I left,” 说 布莱恩Ellithorpe '13. “Seeing another industry where they were just seeking a manager was another opportunity 学习.”
As challenges around recycling in America grow ever more complicated, 布莱恩Ellithorpe 13号站在了最前面.
Until recently, Ellithorpe was general manager at Adirondack Plastics and Recycling 在纽约州阿盖尔市.Y., where he began his career after graduating, working in environmental 健康安全和销售方面. “I thought that there was one type of plastic growing 起来。”他说. “I quickly learned that not all plastics are equal.”
Some background: The recycling industry in America is changing as other countries 限制进口U.S. plastics, once a common and inexpensive way to deal with 这些材料. 现在，美国.S. has to find somewhere to send or process the plastics it once primarily sent to China, which is creating a bottleneck and increasing costs 全面的.
Married and expecting a child, Ellithorpe, who lives in Cambridge, N.Y.我看到了他的勤奋 changing and pivoted to a career as a night manager at U.S. 克里夫顿公园的食物， N.Y.他自6月份以来一直在那里工作.
Adirondack only recycles post-industrial materials, not post-consumer materials, so it does a lot less cleaning and sorting than you might see in a facility that processes our discarded bottles and cast-off containers. Recycled plastic is ground down into pellet form, which makes it easier to melt down into new items or resell for other 目的.
“When I first started at Adirondack Plastics, a normal truckload was 20-30 percent higher in value than what it was when I left,” he 说—but the labor rate to and cost of grinding down those materials to ready them for reuse stays the same. “这很艰难 保证金，”他说. “Seeing another industry where they were just seeking a manager 又是一次学习的机会吗.”
Further complicating matters is the fact that many materials employ several different kinds of plastic to create a final product (a simple household item like your toothbrush can contain four or five different types). Those all have to be isolated; Ellithorpe 说 he spent time at Adirondack trying to convince clients to simplify their packaging 所以它可以更容易地重复使用.
“I think there’s going to be a change,” in how we package items in the U.S. 现在,Ellithorpe 说. “I think we’re going to start seeing more glass or more paper. 塑料仍然 going to be used, but I think if we use more common grades of plastic, recycling would 不要成为问题.”
An environmental studies major at MCLA, Ellithorpe appreciated the teamwork that can come as a result of small class sizes—and helped him eventually manage his own work 一个12人的团队. “Having knowledge of the environment played a large part in getting my foot in the door,” he 说.
A liberal arts education is designed to prepare you for these kind of career changes—and Ellithorpe encourages current students to diversify their talents to prepare for the 就业市场. “Think of a 工作 you want to do, and think of other divisions within that 工作. It’ll make you more valuable as an employee if you say, ‘oh, I have some Quickbooks 经验!’ or some basic human resources 经验, and so on. 有时它更小 stuff you don’t think about, but it plays an important role.”
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