Highlight Zone : Ventura County sees the mysteries and rewards of linking recycling with local industrial development.

County governments around the state are vying to turn their recent successes in the field of recycling into a means of attracting manufacturing jobs to their communities. In Ventura County, the outlook is no different. The cities of Simi Valley, Oxnard and Camarillo have joined together to plan a “Recycling Market Development Zone” in the hopes of attracting factories that would make new products from the reclaimed raw materials diverted from landfills such as metal, glass, paper and building materials.

One factory already in the planning stage is Strait Roofing in Simi Valley, which would begin making a new roofing tile from cellulose fibers, cement scrap and expandable polystyrene. Reclaimed waste-water would also be part of the process.

According to Victoria Hand, recycling section manager with the county’s Solid Waste Management Department and also the designated administrator of the proposed zone, the cities and the county have jointly applied to the state of California for a package of grants and tax breaks worth nearly $5 million. But regardless of the outcome of the grant competition, which will be decided next month, one thing does appear certain. Our county, Hand said, is going to enter the era of manufacturing products--and some pretty sophisticated products too-- by “mining the recyclables.”

Already, there are businesses ahead of the game. Three companies in the proposed zone--an amoeba-shaped area that stretches from Simi Valley through Camarillo to Oxnard and connected by bands of unincorporated county land--are using reclaimed plastics and wood waste. Several other businesses elsewhere in the county are using reclaimed cardboard, crushed ceramic tile from toilets and scrap aluminum.

“Almost anything that you can make from virgin raw materials can be made from recycled (materials),” said Jeannie Wirka of the Sacramento-based foundation, Californians Against Waste. Wirka cited bathtubs, sinks and floor tiles as examples.

At a recycling seminar in Los Angeles last week, Wirka and Hand each gave a presentation on the mysteries and rewards of linking recycling with local industrial development. Experts from the East Coast reported that everything from electrical fences, picnic tables, playground equipment and carpeting can be made from the stuff we put out for curbside recycling.

Regular readers of this column know that I don’t regard the environment as an enemy of economic development. And the statewide competition for programs such as the “Recycling Market Development Zone” is an indication that economic development can be a product--and not a victim--of environmentalism. A further benefit to Ventura County is that jobs in these newer recycling-based industries are future-oriented.

The most dramatic illustrations of this, though, are in the red-blooded worlds of beer, steel and detergents. Anheuser-Busch now cans 17 billion beers a year and annually recycles the same number of cans, thus achieving aluminum “independence.” I’m glad I didn’t stake my future on bauxite.

As of last year, 95% of American steel was made from scrap. Our new electric “mini-mills” are beating out Japan and Germany in price and quality, plus offering us a chance to say farewell to open-pit ore-mining and belching smokestacks.

And Spic and Span is now bottled in recycled plastic. Bye-bye imported petrochemicals.

These are the kinds of 21st-Century processes and jobs that local leaders are now seeking to bring to our county. Well, maybe not the steel mills, but a Spic and Span bottle production facility wouldn’t be a bad thing.

And Tony Kourunis, an officer at the Bank of the Oaks in Thousand Oaks, said local banks are hungry to finance such enterprises. He’s part of a venture capital network in this county that is interested in attracting eco-industry here. Other banks represented are Union Bank, Premiere Bank and American Commercial Bank.

Those banks, it appears, aren’t alone. Last week, a dozen top executives/CEOs of such companies as Dupont, Chevron, Nissan and Volkswagen sent President Bush a report that observed: “Banks are more willing to lend to clean companies, and insurance companies prone to covering clean companies.”

Some think this kind of talk is a cover-up for a capitalist power grab.

But if we can get some of these businesses into our Ventura Recycling Market Development Zone, I don’t care if they clean up financially by helping us clean up environmentally.

* FYI

* For information on the Ventura County proposed Recycling Market Development Zone, call Victoria Hand at 648-9241.

* For information on currently available recycled products, which have been divided into 400 manufacturing categories, call American Recycling Market Inc. (800) 267-0707.