Recycled-plastics maker John Gogol is betting his career on being able to sell to electronics giants such as Hewlett-Packard and Epson. By April Streeter
John Gogol is making the biggest bet of his career on boxes filled with plastic pellets that resemble tiny grains of wild rice. A veteran procurement engineer for both Beaverton, Ore.-based Tektronix Inc. and Epson, Gogol has an intensity born of passion, and the thing he's passionate about is recycled plastic.
The mission for his company, PC Plastics, is to cull TV cases and computer monitors from local waste streams, crush and mix the appliances with polystyrene and a special additive, and churn out pellets for that maintain the same quality as virgin plastic.
"The process is a bit like using a giant Cuisinart," Gogol said. “We funnel the used material into a big mixing bowl, densify it, extrude it like spaghetti, and then chop it into pellets.”
Gogol has spent countless hours perfecting a formula for the recycled plastic pellets, which he said have passed quality assurance tests. The real challenge is to produce enough of the pellets at a low enough cost so that he can offer them at competitive prices to large electronics manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard Co. and Panasonic.
Brian Davidson, general manager of manufacturing for Panasonic subsidiary Matsushita Kotobuki, said his company would like to use PC Plastics in the future. “We’re always looking for ways to improve our environmental performance, and PC Plastics can do that plus save costs as well -- which is always a good thing in our competitive environment.”
From his small facility in Northeast Portland, Gogol can churn out about 300 pounds of pellets an hour, and roughly 80,000 pounds a month. He said he can sell the initial output to local companies such as Washougal, Wash.’s Piller Plastics for use in custom-molded plastic products. But to offer enough plastic to meet Panasonic’s needs, Gogol would have to more than triple hourly production to 1,000 pounds of pellets an hour. And to do that, Gogol would require either a larger facility or a partner, preferably one already producing plastics for the company’s prospective customers.
“I want to be able to look across the table at HP and say, 'I can solve your problems’,” Gogol said. “Right now I can’t do that. I would be holding their products captive if we or any part of our process were to fail.”
Gogol said he needs a minimum of $500,000 to boost PC Plastic’s production capabilities. Though he’s strived since May to pull in new investors, and though he claims to have one good prospect on the line, Gogol admits it hasn’t been easy.
“It costs money to sign investors, and when they get close, the panic and the greed come in,” he said. “No investor wants to lose, and there isn’t a guarantee.”
Thus far, the automotive industry has had the greatest success with developing a market for recycled plastics. DaimlerChrysler, for one, has estimated the use of recycled material in automotive parts could save the car industry up to $320 million a year.
In electronics, the savings would be smaller but still significant, Gogol said. “If you can save a nickel or even two to three cents a pound and you are using millions of pounds a year, well, it starts to add up.”
Gogol said he’s confident the right venture capitalist will come along. “If I were rich I’d certainly want to be a partner,” said Epson electric engineer George Lundberg. “We all need to get on board using recycled materials, make a start, and build on that.”
-------
This article first appeared in the August 2003 issue of Sustainable Industries Journal.
