SACRAMENTO-
Recyclers who ship cardboard and paper throw-a-ways overseas say they are already suffering from the dispute between longshoremen and warehouse workers and shippers at 29 ports on the west coast.
“By business profits have been completely eliminated this whole year because of the problems at the port,” David Kuhnen, general manager of Recycling Industries, told FOX40.
The business, among other things, collects all the recyclables from all the homes in Sacramento County. Its four warehouses are filled with bales of cardboard and paper normally bound for customers in China, Korea, Japan, Indonesian and other countries in the Pacific Rim.
Kuhnen’s father started the business out of his backyard 30 years ago and it is now a $15 million a year business. There are thousands of other recycling businesses in California.
$7.5 billion in trash is shipped out of California ports alone and accounts for a whopping 25 percent by weight of all sea shipments in the state.
Kuhnen is sitting on 400 truckloads of baled paper and cardboard since Thanksgiving when slowdown tactics in the labor dispute kicked in.
“We’re handcuffed, we can’t move it because of the port problem, we can’t store anymore,” said Kuhnen.
He says his company is still family run and he doesn’t have deep pockets. He worries that his county contract may be terminated if can’t accept anymore truckloads of recyclables that continue to come in each day. So far he has managed to avoid layoffs, but he worries about what may happen to his 100 employees.
He joined state lawmakers, growers and other businesses affected by the port dispute to urge both sides to come to an agreement, and for President Obama to step in to halt a four day shutdown scheduled to begin this weekend.
