Reader Profile: Len Christopher

A solid waste recycling facility isn’t typically considered a tourist stop, especially in Las Vegas, NV. But when that ­facility is Republic Service’s Southern Nevada Recycling Center that draws visitors from as far as South Korea, it’s a different matter. General Manager Len Christopher is credited for developing North America’s largest residential recycling center. The 110,000-square-foot facility serves the ­recycling needs of more than 535,000 area households and is designed to accommodate increased residential, ­commercial, and industrial southern Nevada recycling demands.

Visitors get a first-hand view of the recycling process in the observation deck and learn about recycling and sustainability in the learning center. What they see is a center that can process 70 tons of mixed recyclables hourly. Finished bales of paper, plastic, and metals are processed and shipped to domestic and international markets as commodities within 24 hours of arrival. The center recycles 2.3 million pounds of aluminum cans annually, sending them to Anheiser-Bush for repurposing. Some 28.8 million pounds of glass is recycled annually from hotel and casino properties and sent to California to be turned into wine and beer bottles.

Being a significant tourist destination, the Las Vegas solid wastestream varies in size and content. “When it starts getting warm here, the amount of PET we recycle from hotels and residences is mind-blowing,” says Christopher, adding that the throughput nearly doubles.

The center features a highly automated control system, including touchscreen Human Machine Interface control, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) monitoring, and remote access. Five optical sorters maximize the recovery of all seven grades of plastics, except Styrofoam and PVC.

Other technologies include metering bins, a pre-sort deck, an old corrugated container screen, news screens, a fiber optic sorter, a magnetic drum, an eddy current, an optical sorter, and a baler. The center was the first worldwide operation to feature a CP Group glass cleaning system. The operation also features sustainable practices, hosting a photovoltaic rooftop solar energy system of 1,776 panels (315 W), generating 933,162 kW of energy annually, providing for more than 15% of the site’s power consumption. High solar reflectance index roof materials minimize the building’s heat retention. More than 75% of the building is made from recycled and remanufactured steel. The natural landscape was repurposed to make aggregate for flood channels surrounding the building. Automatic low-flow fixtures reduce water consumption by more than 20%.

The recycling efforts are a 24-hour job, notes Christopher. “I think there’s one hour on a Sunday afternoon that we don’t have trucks on the road,” he says.

What He Does Day to Day
Christopher oversees a staff of 150, meeting with many of them daily. He checks on the status of projects, offering guidance. Christopher tracks strategies and metrics to ensure the facility is meeting its targets. He helps the sales team with proposals and interviews new employees. He also goes out into the community to conduct educational presentations.

What Led Him to This Line of Work
After his schooling at Valley Forge Military Academy & College in Pennsylvania, Christopher started his own company in solid waste, which morphed into what he has created today. He had grown up recycling in south New Jersey. “There wasn’t a lot of it going on here,” he says. “So, there was definitely an opportunity to grow a business here, because, at that time, there was a tremendous amount of construction and building going on. We filled that need.”

What He Likes Best About His Work
“I like my team,” says Christopher. “I like developing talent. We’re at the helm of the latest and greatest technology. It’s a pretty exciting job if you look at how much we’re diverting from the landfill on a daily basis.”

His Greatest Challenge
Getting through that first year was a challenge, Christopher says. “It’s not easy to have a startup—to have a facility of this size and be able to hit your benchmarks out of the gate,” he says. “There are a lot of moving parts and tracking tools. The challenge was showing everybody this team we have here in southern Nevada is the best of the best. We proved that.”

The center took SWANA’s 2016 Gold Excellence Award in recycling systems.