Illinois Recycling Association Virtual Tour

Welcome to one of the newest features on our website! The Illinois Recycling Association is pleased to be able to present these “virtual tour” videos of various recycling facilities across Illinois. If you cannot take an actual tour, a virtual tour may be a good substitute. Virtual tours can be informative and used in many educational settings. The videos presented here were filmed and created by Duvall Productions in Springfield, IL. This new feature of IRA’s website has been made possible through a grant from the Illinois Department of Commerce & Economic Opportunity, Bureau of Energy & Recycling. Thank you, DCEO!

We are interested in your feedback about the virtual tour videos presented here. Please submit your comments to us at: info@illinoisrecycles.org. Thank you for your interest in IRA and recycling!

Groot Industries (You Tube, Quicktime or Windows Media File) – Groot is a large urban recycling processing center located in the suburban Chicago area. Groot’s operation is highly automated, relying mainly on mechanized sorting and consolidation of materials with minimal help from human laborers. See their website at: www.groot.com

Eagle Enterprises (You Tube, Quicktime or Windows Media File) – Eagle Enterprises is a relatively small, rural recycling processing center located in Galva, in western Illinois. Eagle Enterprises’ operation relies mainly on manual labor for sorting and consolidating materials from an elevated sorting line. See their website at: www.eerecycling.com

Sims Recycling Solutions (You Tube, Quicktime or Windows Media File) – Sims is located in West Chicago, Illinois and is part of the largest electronics and metals recycling corporation in the world. Sims provides some repair and sales of refurbished computers, but deconstructs and recycles many thousands of tons of electronics each year using a mechanized sorting and separating system.

Sims Recycling Solutions provides complete protection of data for equipment that is remarketed as well as that which is recycled. Items with reuse potential are cleansed following the guidelines detailed by the US Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology in Special Publication 800-88 - Guidelines for Media Sanitization. Hard drives and the data on them that are not suitable for reuse, either because of client request or technology/functionality traits, are destroyed via shredding, as recommended in the US Department of Defense Manual 5220.22-M, National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual.

See their website at: www.sims-group.com/us_erecycling/home.

BLH Computers (You Tube, Quicktime or Windows Media File) – BLH is located in Springfield, Illinois. BLH repairs, refurbishes and sells many computers and computer components each year, which is a main focus of their business. BLH also deconstructs and recycles an estimated average of 500 tons per year of mixed electronics and components in a what is mainly a manual labor system.

BLH Computers destroys all customer data on hard drives received for recycling using one of two methods. First, if the Hard Drive can be reused, a hard drive sanitizer is used to wipe the drive to Department of Defense standards. Secondly, if the drive is not to be reused, or if the drive fails the sanitizer, it is physically shredded.

See their website at: www.blhcomputers.com.

Land and Lakes (You Tube, Quicktime or Windows Media File) – Land and Lakes is one of the largest commercial composting operations in the Midwest. Land and Lakes operates from several locations; the site profiled here is located at Romeoville, Illinois. Using both heavy machinery and manual labor to process and manage yard waste (branches, brush, leaves and grass clippings), each year, Land and Lakes processes hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of natural waste into a premium finished compost product. See their website at: www.land-and-lakes.com/landscape.

Engineered Plastic Systems (You Tube, Quicktime or Windows Media File) – Engineered Plastic Systems is located in Elgin, Illinois. EPS uses 100% post-consumer #2 HDPE plastics to create a variety of plastic lumber and plastic lumber products. EPS uses tons of #2 plastic each year, giving extended useful life to millions of containers that may otherwise have ended up in a landfill. See their website at: www.epsplasticlumber.com.