happy 4th of July first and foremost I want to thank all troops in our armed services for the sacrifices they and their families have made for our freedoms in this great country in this episode I get a chance to sit down with Mario Martinez from the GAO infilled qrp and he is able to show us how important recycling is not only at his facility but at all military bases across the nation take a listen all right welcome everybody here with another episode of recycled Idaho I’ve got a excited for this one I got my guest here Mario Martinez how you doing sir I’m doing well in yourself I’m doing good man it’s Friday and we’re going to the weekend we’ve had a long week here at United metals been busy again like things are feeling like they’re trying to turn back to normal on the volume so it’s been real busy and it’s nice to get back to like somewhat normalcy with what’s going on out in the world right now how about you guys you guys busy yeah yeah we’ll pick back up things are things are hopping and you know we’ve had

a few hiccups herself this week but we do make do with what we have so what’s really cool about this episode is I usually talk to people from different industries but you are in the recycling industry and you kind of tell I know but tell me and tell the people listening hey like who you are and who what you do yeah my name is Mario Martinez I I work for Gowen field recycling run the basically I run the recycle program for the Army National Guard in the state of Idaho so we have different armories and FMS branches throughout the state and we help facilitate their recycle program so you help all the different branches throughout the state to like all the different ones with the National Guard at least correct we have one in like there’s one in Pocatello one in Twin Falls one Caldwell Caldwell mountain home Lewiston dude they are each one of those are they self-sufficient or they scrap to their local scrap yard or do you pull it back to this your main hub here in Boise Idaho so most everything goes local and cardboard goes local office products

that kind of stuff go stays local scrap-iron stays local the things that come back here for the most part are the batteries the lead-acid batteries okay become thank you okay so that makes sense because that’s something that reoccurring comes up for bid yeah um I would say every few months you have a good palette of them yeah it’s like yeah we try to keep the battery load right around 14 to 18 thousand pounds it keeps the keeps the load smaller so smaller more manageable and then you can pin it keep it out of your space because you how big is your warehouse over there it is a hundred by sixty so it’s relatively small and we’ve got two yards and a storage facility next next door to our building but yeah we’re tight for space and we try to keep the product moving as fast as we can and how long have you been over there coming up on two years okay Wow already I know I remember when you started them and time flies and it’s been real nice to work with you when we get the chance to and it’s

nice to kind of see the with the changes you’ve made over there because I’ve been there before you around I’d have been over there before too and you’ve really made some big changes to help yourself be more self-sufficient right yeah where you control where you deliver your scrap or you make yourself a little more I assume like cost-effective yeah were you because they kind of pulled you in your job is like we make the base as much extra money yeah as they can right yeah so basically how it works is the qrp which stands for qualified recycling program we’re self-funded so basically our operating costs get back backed out of off the bottom line and then everything else goes back to MWR which is Morale Welfare and Recreation okay so all the money goes back to the Troops so if MWR has a gym facility that they’re trying to build or there’s a new rec room or something that they’re trying to build and they for example the project’s going to cost $200,000 and then they have $100,000 then they come to the qrp and they say hey we

need $100,000 can you help us out we send them the funds and then there it is well that’s awesome I myself I’m I’ve never served in the military but I’ve always been so Pro military my both my grandfather served in Navy Navy Reserves one of my grandfather’s was in World War two I mean I got a tattoo for him right here for the Navy so I got like the utmost respect for for all that and that’s why I think the timing of this one’s gonna be cool cuz we are gonna post this on the 4th of July nice so it’s gonna be I think an awesome fit and before I really had started working in this Boise facility I didn’t realize how much recyclables metal can come out of a base you know you just get so much that’s just sick one piece that don’t really think so like you if you we can go back a little bit can you kind of give us a little bit of your background before you were over here yeah so back in 2000 I think I started in recycling at 2000 four or five okay

I started out with Pacific recycling and Great Falls gave their home branches in Montana in Montana okay up and I worked there for four years and what did you start doing what was your first job I was running the scale buying stuff from the customers running the nonferrous Keller the final affairs and okay yeah and first so we’d have to go out and check the loads going down to the tin pile and scrap iron them you have judgment calls yeah by cop rice it out yeah by copper brass aluminum cans likes worse stuff yes I started in our non ferrous recycle center in 2010 so we have a similar like kind of start and background yeah and this is so much to learn did it and he said you were there for years yeah well I do I knew I wanted I really enjoy the industry right it’s it’s exciting it’s a lot of the same stuff but you never really know what you’re gonna do it’s always different oh yeah it’s the same but different you know yeah and so I knew I wanted to progress my career I thought I found something

that I really wanted to stick with mm-hmm and things were rather rather stagnant there everybody kind of had at home but I wanted to grow so I happen to my manager and I said how do i how do I grow with this thing and they said you have to be willing to move okay not a problem yeah moved quite a bit as a kid it’s not a big deal yeah so I put my name in the Hat for anything that came up anything anywhere and opportunity came up to help open a branch in Yakima Washington mm-hmm so that came up they sent me out there to look and see if I liked it loved it moved the family out there was there for three years okay in Yakima in that brand new facility brand new it had been open a year and a half I think okay so that’s new and in any real business term yes they had a new steel branch okay that they wanted to to bring in a combination on ship which they do the Pacific does that a lot like yeah they had they kind of double

up on him right yeah depending on the market and where it’s at yeah yeah sure and then so I went out there and lend my knowledge if you will we turned the corner and started making pretty good money I I had an opportunity to come to Pocatello okay and basically what Pacific does well I don’t know if they do it anymore but they had this curriculum that they put together to groom management okay yeah so I got management training yeah right yeah they called it a junior management okay cool anyway I got in on that and we we start I started with that did pretty well they moved me to Pocatello to further my knowledge on the day-to-day management aspect and then I I was there for eight months and then I was I was offered the assistant manager position in North Dakota that’s what brought you this North Dakota yeah okay yeah so I went out there it was in North Dakota for three years roughly okay and at that point I thought you know I really want to grow and and I wanted to expand my chances of getting my

own branch as a manager yeah so I thought well transferred a new steel and learned sales and the whole point of it so then I could either do new steel or recycling or a combination is making yourself more valuable to the company which any employer man jerk would pre she appreciates that an employee yeah you know and so I did that and then the the bust happened in North Dakota and it felt quick the Oh a yeah oh wait bus okay yeah and then yeah yeah well it would have been around 2015 oh that one okay I’m not when in oh wait yeah the fifteen one okay yeah yeah the oil market kind of felt that heart yeah that was the one that really broke the camel’s back so to speak okay and as luck would have it I was on the chopping block unfortunately and then I just drew my baguette from my bag of tricks and yeah worked a couple different miscellaneous jobs yeah went back to the oil field actually in the oil field for two and a half years okay and then what were you doing in the oil field

I was fracking okay yeah cool and did that for a while it was okay but I honestly don’t remember putting in my resume cuz like they found it on indeed and okay I got a phone call from chief Walden okay here here in Gowen and he’s like are you still interested and at that time I’d met my current wife and was looking at relocating here anyway and so it worked out really good I’m feeling very blessed so you know that’s I love that story because so many people fall upon some some hard times you know got laid off and I mean when you go through anything like that it’s easy to kind of it like down you know yeah but then you know looking back now like you guys live here I hope you like it in Idaho I do yeah like I love I’ve lived here my whole life so I’m kind of bias about it like I love it I’ve been to a lot of other places to visit I wouldn’t really want to live in anywhere else so like you’re in Idaho you’re still working in recycling and like you know

you’re managing the facility here yeah and that just shows like when you just even when the chips are down and like all that hard work you put in for those years of Pacific still paid off you know still paid off here yeah you know and I just think and I’m personally my personal opinion is I I really think things happen by chance I think things happen for a reason very much so you know and like you know and you’re here for a reason and it all worked out for you yeah yeah I well I went to college for auto body paint and refinishing mm-hmm and then I took business management classes too because I wanted to own my own custom body shop okay and it’s great great business but it’s brutal on your body you know for that week I mean reality is very few like Jeff so you must have like cars then oh yeah I love cars yeah cuz I mean anyway you gotta have a passion for that yeah to do it you start a business like that yeah and so that’s what that was my goal and I still

tinker at home but the business management classes really paid off yeah big time for me now so I’m glad I took that route so real quick before we press record we were talking about another one of your hobbies that I think is pretty cool and interesting me being a scrap guy and you being a scrap guy you see a lot of these in your scrap pile and you probably came across a bunch when you’re at Pacific so what is your other hobby I collect bicycles it sounds kind of strange no that’s cool yeah I I’m not as active as I once was but at the peak I had about 70 bikes all different styles in KY and to say I had a 42 Sears Roebuck okay that was pretty fun and I fix him up and ride him okay the time currently now I’m down to about four or five so I sold most of them off to finance different movies and stuffs and that’s going back to the scrap again like that’s one thing I love about that show American Pickers I love the fact that they go to all these places that

I kind of go to like look gonna yard like farm cleanups and you come across that we came across these old motorcycles which I have to me it’s scrap I got like I’m not a collector and that to me it’s scrap but I I find it really cool when you stumble across like something that’s worth like 10 20 grand you crush it it’s worth like two three bucks you know yeah but if you find the right buyer so I’m sure some of those bikes like from could be probably worth some money right yeah I’ve got a 1936 Harvard role fast and it’s just raw metal yeah I looked it up and a fully restored one is worth about five grand yeah see that’s a perfect example yeah so get back to gallon filled here what are like what are the main things that get recycled in a facility in a base like this like what do you mainly see on your day to day so in in the regulations we have to take cardboard plastic office paper those types of things that we we have to take if it’s in it’s in the bylaws

yeah so we get a lot of that type of material and that’s a tough market right now it’s super tough yeah we do it because it’s the right thing to do yeah and it it it helps the it helps out in the long run and it saves on your like garbage if you threw it away you’d be enjoying those garbage fees right you’re saving at least that – and I part of as I have to quarterly do a diversion rate okay so we take a sample of the trash trash bins to go through it sort it out find out what type of my recycle bowls are getting thrown away and then what and we compare that to the amounts that we are claiming through our recycle program okay and so that helps us know where we can target different offices okay and then education of course is is crucial so you go around all the different departments and kind of go in there and kind of figure out the best way that each one could do like almost create like a recycling plan for them right yeah essentially and really what it is is locating

the location of our recycle bins mm-hmm if it’s if we haven’t been in this copy room and so we put one in another break room but it’s not getting used we I get with the building managers and find out okay where’s everybody going yeah cuz we’re finding a lot of recycles in the trash gotcha like why is this recycle bin not being used right right and then we try to find a better location for it that it will get used so we can recapture that material well it probably keeps you busy man cuz they got a big facility there and then all the other ones you manage – yeah um so this Tuesday we’re gonna go look at some scrap right yeah I’m kind of excited it’s it’s it’s old material okay it’s been out there for decades okay and there there’s some material that’s been out there since the Korean War time yeah so basically what it is is they they decommission tanks and bradley’s and things of that nature pull the ends in and oil and all the liquids out and they play some randomly out in the desert and they just

shoot it with yeah tanks and they do some 500-pound bombs and all kinds of stuff goes on out there so they use them for training its you exactly yep and they’re out in the desert is so you’re not even sure the last time they’ve cleaned up this particular area yeah the range we’re going to look at its last been cleaned up I think they told me in the 70s okay so there’s there’s some big heavy stuff out there and you know I we have made the corner we’ve started buying some different equipment to help us out be efficient and and independent but this this stuff might I’m calling on some of the scrap yards to look guys yeah well come look at it yeah yeah see who can come away with it yeah yeah exactly well I’m always I feel I appreciate you keeping us in the loop goodness chance to bid on that material I appreciate it getting to know you better and also kind of learning how it works over here because for many years I didn’t get a chance to go on base very often I can except if it

was like you know like a company working on it that we would work with yeah we’d go there but through the actual recycling program that’s been kind of new the last few years yeah so it’s been nice to work with you and I’m excited to check this out Tuesday we’ll bring out some cameras and show everybody kind of give people a little little insight on the recycling that happens at bases and and this is something else like this happens at bases everywhere yes every single base yes sir yeah every single base in the nation had that program just like this yep do you talk to some of those other recycle programs I do you do and you guys kind of help each other here I went to they call it a Fitz and I don’t remember what the acronym stands for but basically it’s a training class to know what material is recyclable okay what stuff is not like that sort of stuff’s by regulation there’s there stuff that I cannot take electronics certain airplane parts some like classified type yeah yeah and and the the reason for that is that they’re worried about

somebody reverse engineering something yeah being able to use it against us source you know yeah I get that and that’s why when we bought things from different auctions and that we have to provide even through like government liquidation calm yeah we buy some stuff from them and they would send people from the base to watch us Commission yeah watch us this you know everyone let us just like take a video they would be here the whole time so I understand like it can be sensitive and and there’s a cost to that so you got to build that into the bid ya know and just so everyone’s clear like you you don’t work for the military you work you do but you don’t right yeah so I’m a civilian or military program is that how they all are sums like are there some programs out there that are ran by the military yeah so it’s kind of both yeah okay just happens that I hadn’t ever had the qualifications that they were looking for the gentleman I took over for was military okay so it was yet and he was on his third retirement okay

ready just to hang it up yeah and he’s ready to go fishing right okay good for him and yeah so well cool man well is there anything you want to add is there one thing that we and on these very often is like do you have someone that’s really inspired you or been a good mentor that growing up they’d like to kind of give a shout out to yeah I would I would probably say my dad okay good yeah he Father’s Day was a few weeks ago you know yeah he was uh he was one of those firm but fair okay you know he was a disciplinarian is exactly what I needed yeah life and he taught me the value of a dollar dad taught me the value of hard work yeah and and dedication and you know he had passed on early 90s okay and uh but there’s there’s little things that he had always be still with you yeah my god should always come back to mind from time to time so well yeah I mean same here my dad’s taught me so much I think most a lot of people wouldn’t

be there where they are today if it weren’t for their dad or mom yeah so awesome well thanks for coming on I’m excited to get out there on Tuesday all right thanks for having me thank you