Company Aims for 75% Recycling at Camarillo Target Construction Site

A new Target store in Camarillo may not have a roof yet, but it does have three recycling bins.

Credit the bins to E.J. Harrison & Sons, the Ventura-based trash hauler that has teamed with Target Stores to recycle metal, concrete, wood and other building material, along with everyday garbage, discarded at the construction site of the retail outlet.

The 120,000-square-foot Target store, scheduled to open in mid-July, is part of the 39-acre Camarillo Towne Center under development on West Ventura Boulevard near the Los Posas Road exit off the Ventura Freeway.

Upon completion, the store will be the fifth Target in Ventura County. As of March, there will be 691 stores in the nationwide chain.

“We’re hoping to get 75% to 80% recyclable from the site,” said Lynn Harrison, a sales and customer service representative for the Harrison company. “We have done work similar to this on other projects, but not to this degree.”

Harrison said concrete will be hauled to Southern Pacific Milling Co. near Oxnard; wood will go to California Wood Recycling in Ventura, to be converted to mulch or fuel wood; metal will be taken to Ventura’s Standard Industries and will ultimately be melted down, and plastic, cardboard, paper and aluminum will end up at Gold Coast Recycling Center in Ventura.

With the project just 2 months old, he said, it is too early to estimate the quantity of material that will be recycled.

Elliot Schindel, the construction site representative for Target, said this is the first time the chain has attempted to recycle such a range of material on a construction site. After the store is up and running, Schindel said, a baler will be installed to sort cardboard and paper products from the store’s nonrecyclables on a regular basis.

For Harrison & Sons, coordinating a recycling plan with local businesses is nothing new.

In 1990, the company began a Commercial Recycling program that has resulted in the recycling and reuse of about 15% to 20% of waste generated by its commercial clients in Camarillo, Ventura, Ojai, Fillmore, Santa Paula and unincorporated areas of the county.

Those clients include Kinko’s Inc. and Patagonia Inc. in Ventura, the Ventura County Government Center, The Oaks of Ojai spa and Las Posas Elementary School in Camarillo.

“Hundreds of businesses do it. Almost all of the restaurants have some recycling,” said Tom Chiarodit, recycling coordinator at Harrison & Sons.

He said about two-thirds of the company’s approximately 3,000 business customers are involved with the recycling program.