Vinyl industry aids recycler's efforts. (NonMetallics).

After the plastic recycling company he worked for went out of business in the late 1990s, Kevin Reily established Reily Recovery Systems (RRS) in 1999 with the help of a grant from the Vinyl Institute and loans from private sources.

Reily's vinyl siding recycling center, based in Sanford, N.C., serves mobile home manufacturers and major area building contractors and distributors.

"RRS has developed several different ways of collecting recycling materials through alliances with other organizations in various customer locations," Reilly says. "But we also provide a service that is truly unique in the recycling industry."

Reily is referring to the company's initiative in which RRS supplies collection cages to vinyl siding users for separating and collecting vinyl scrap. Once transported to the company's Sanford grinding plant, the scrap is sorted and ground into 3/8-inch pieces. In a closed-loop process, the vinyl is recycled, boxed and sold to manufacturers who use it to produce new PVC pipe and mobile home skirting, for example.

Reilly says he's invested in a wash line that will allow RRS to provide more versatile recycling services to its customers. Reily has also contracted with a baling facility in Douglas, Ga., which enables RRS to serve its customer base in Georgia and bring baled material from other East Coast states to the North Carolina plant for processing.

RRS has three full-time and four part-time employees. The company also has provided vinyl building products and recycling opportunities to Habitat for Humanity.