Rubber to the road

They look insurmountable, the 21 piles of rubber, each 200-by-40 feet wide and standing 20 feet high.

But the owners of Recycling Universe, located off Interstate 20 west of the Charter Waste Landfill and just before the edge of the Caprock, say that starting Jan. 4, they will go after the cut up tires with full force. Three crews of seven people will work around the clock each workday putting the rubber in two 150-foot long processing machines, which grind the rubber into pieces ranging from a quarter-inch wide to the thickness of a grain of medicine in a capsule.

Owners said the plant has the capability of processing up to 10,000 tires a day.

The ground rubber is then sold for use in up to 30,000 products, including playground surfaces, asphalt for roads and artificial turf for football and soccer fields. FIFA, the international governing body for soccer, is one of the company’s customers.

“We make different sizes,” manager Felipe Arancibia said with administrative assistant Anastacia Valles translating. “It just depends on what size a client wants to buy and what it is used for.”

The business is a “green” company, looking to help with illegal dumping and other problems related to improper storage of old tires.

“In two years, we get rid of the problem,” said Sylvia Magos, who along with husband Gerardo Magos, owns Recycling Universe and Minera el Realito, which markets the company’s products in Mexico. “But the problem in the city is still there. We process faster than we are going to be able to collect.”

In the city, county and across the Permian Basin, used tires are piling up. But until the company gets a license to accept tires from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Sylvia Magos said they would only be able to grind up what’s left of the 60,000 tons of rubber left over from the previous owner of the 20 acres.

So far, the company has only processed about 10,000 tons of the leftover rubber, but company officials expect to pick that rate up once production increases.

Currently, people in the area are disposing of tires by cutting them into pieces and burying them, Sylvia Magos said. It then takes 500 years for the tires to biodegrade.

“Ecologically, that’s terrible,” she said. “That land is useless.”

The company is picking up production next month in order to show TCEQ that it is getting rid of the rubber, which is needs to do to get a license to accept new tires, Sylvia Magos said. She expects to have enough customers to have demand meet the increased supply.

But if they process and sell the tire pieces and don’t get a license, that could mean the company would have to stop production, Gerardo Magos said with his wife translating.

Though the Odessa location is the largest they own, the Magos’ company has other tire processing plants in Mexico City and Juarez. Plans are in the works to open plants in Oklahoma, San Antonio and El Paso, Gerardo Magos said. The Mexico City natives decided to come to Odessa three years ago after talking to Oscar Gonzalez, a friend and former Pecos County commissioner who told them about the tires sitting at the Ector County site and the need to dispose of them in the Permian Basin.

“He talked to us about the problem they have had with this facility,” Gerardo Magos said. “We have been talking with a lot of people who have the same problem.”

Arleene Loyd, the Odessa Chamber of Commerce’s director of business retention and expansion, said she is helping Recycling Universe look into buying another 20 acres, doubling the size of its property. She is in discussions with owners of two neighboring pieces of land.

“They seem like they’re very interested in expanding,” Loyd said. “They’ve got the rail close to them. That’s always a plus.”

Part of the plan is to increase the number of employees at the Odessa facility to 70 if Recycling Universe gets a license from TCEQ, Sylvia Magos said. The company would also build a facility on site where it can mold and color rubber, so that it could be green to go with artificial grass or orange to fit in with the ground at a playground.

The rubber recycling plant is another sign of development springing up in western Ector County, Loyd said. Summit Power Group Inc.’s $1.7 billion coal gasification plant is planned for Penwell, just on the other side of the Caprock. And the economic development department is also looking for a developer of a nearby site formerly operated by ARCO.

Loyd said that site is advantageous because it has dry evaporation ponds and underground gas storage facilities.

“That looks like a good area for industry right now and in the future,” Loyd said.