By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Columnist

One of the things that makes recycling work most efficiently is finding local industries to use the recycled products.

On Kaua'i, JC Sandblast & Recycle Glass Service grinds up old bottles and uses them for a variety of purposes. The grinding process produces a sand-like compound, rather than sharp shards of glass.

Its main use is as the grit replacing sand in sandblasting, but the company also provides ground glass as a replacement for sand and gravel in concrete, as a fill behind rock retaining walls and even as a decorative material between patio pavers.

The firm's owners have also found that a layer of ground glass around potted plants can keep slugs from attacking the plants.

One Honolulu company, Intech, of Kalihi, has found several uses for used paper.

Intech president Bernie Boltz said he started out as a document destruction firm, expecting to use shredded office paper for various local uses. But he found that office paper lacked the absorbency he sought. Besides, recycled office paper is a product sought-after for recycling into new office paper, he said. The office paper, then, gets shipped off to paper mills.

However, he still had ideas for other uses of paper, and Boltz for a decade has converted newspapers, telephone books and old cardboard boxes into three kinds of new products used in Hawai'i.

Some of the paper goes into boxes that are used by home automotive oil-changers. The oil is poured into the boxes, where it is absorbed by the the ground-up paper, which Boltz said looks like dryer lint.

Boltz said his firm has now made more than a million of the oil-change units, which are sold at stores such as Long's, Daiei and NAPA. The boxes full of oil-soaked material can be put in the trash, and form a perfect fuel for Honolulu's waste-to-energy HPOWER plant.

The company adds surfactants and a green dye to cellulose and sells it to nursery professionals in 50-pound bags. The companies soak the stuff in water and spray it onto bare soil to support new growth, a process called hydromulching. The technique helps reduce erosion of bare soil, improves rainfall absorption, and reduces the speed at which the soil dries out in the sun.

Boltz's firm also produces cellulose insulation, which can be sprayed into walls and blown into attics to reduce heat transfer.

Says Boltz: "All of these products are first rate, have been proven in the market place, are competitively priced, take nothing in the way of subsidies from the government, and in production we use as much post-consumer waste as we are able."

Jan TenBruggencate is The Advertiser's Kaua'i bureau chief and its science and environment writer. Reach him at (808) 245-3074 or jant@honoluluadvertiser.com.