Freeport lab aims to recycle political signs

FREEPORT - They found themselves standing in a sea of signs.

One day during the lead-up to the Aug. 26 primary elections, John Magee - who is running for re-election on the South Walton Mosquito Control Board - was at the Republican headquarters with Walton County School Board candidate Robert Nelson and Bob Hudson, a former County Commission hopeful.

"Robert said, ‘What are we going to do with all these signs?' " recalled Magee, a Miramar Beach resident.
Thus was born the idea for a sign-recycling program.

Magee is president and CEO of Freeport-based Hi-Tec Laboratories, a 15-year-old company that makes plastic toys and bottles that are sold around the world. Hi-Tec also is the parent company of Gulf Stream Plastics, which serves as a drop-off site for political signs that have outlived their purpose after lining county roads over the past several months.

Magee said GSP will accept the signs through Thanksgiving, and estimated that about 800 pounds of them have been collected thus far. After shredding the signs, the material will be sent to a recycling broker in Montgomery, Ala., which then sanitizes the material and sells it to companies that use the material in their own products.

For example, Hyundai uses the recycled material to make dashboards for its automobiles, Magee said.
GSP accepts only political signs for the recycling program because they are made from a material different from other signs.

Although the project costs money, labor, electricity and time, Magee said, "we are very concerned about our carbon footprint. We're very green-minded and environmentally friendly."

Mark Youngblood, president of the nearly 90-member South Walton Firefighters Association, said union members place signs for the candidates they support and pick them up after the general election in November.

"We have signs with (the South Walton Firefighters Association name) on them, and we make a commitment to place the signs and pick them up at the end of the election," Youngblood said.

He got in touch with Magee after seeing his posting about the recycling program on www.sowal.com. Since the Aug. 26 primary election, Youngblood said union members spent three or four days collecting about 300 signs for the two candidates they supported.

GSP plant manager Joseph Blalock said most of the signs from candidates who are not running in the general election - either because they lost or because they won by default - already have been removed from roads and sent through the shredder.

Once word of the recycling program got out, "they were literally bringing them in by the truckload," he said. "We had an overwhelming response."