SBO Award Winners 2013: Good signs for Northwest Recycling

With its water jets that cleanly restore aluminum signs that would otherwise require a lot of carbon to reuse, Prineville’s Northwest Sign Recycling has become one of Oregon’s most innovative companies.

Northwest Sign Recycling hydrostrips aluminum road signs, using jets of water — some 37,000 pounds per square inch — to remove old sign laminates and restore blank signs to a smooth reusable surface. The company’s process extracts any leftover laminate fragments by vacuum, which officials say allows for “nonhazardous disposal of the waste.” Such laminates include engineer grade, high intensity and diamond grade reflective sheeting that’s typically used on aluminum signs.

In the end, the system allows for the integrity of the aluminum to remain intact without compromising the metal itself.

As for the water the company uses? The excess is collected and filtered twice before it leaves the building.

Simply put, Northwest Sign Recycling has hit upon a clean process that refurbishes old, weathered and otherwise unusable signs. Recycling the older signs is expensive and can yield pollution.

Hydrostripping is also 24 times less energy-intensive than transporting, separating, grinding, melting, reforming and redistributing signs

“Aluminum does not exist in its pure form in nature; it must be extracted from ore and produced,” the company’s leaders say, adding that the company hydrostrips an average of 15 tons per year worth of aluminum road signs. It also recycles an additional 30 tons of aluminum per year when the signs can’t be reused.

Plus, the company’s doing its part to help Central Oregon’s economy.

“Working with companies like Northwest Signs, which is filling important business and transportation needs using recycled materials, is encouraging, because their innovative success has a positive ripple effect throughout Central Oregon and beyond,” Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber said in June 2012.