As the world looks to preserve its natural resources and recycle its waste stream, Northstar continues to position itself to meet the needs of its customers. Whether recycling traditional waste streams of paper and plastic or pioneering into electronics, mattresses and other waste banned from landfills, Northstar will seek an end user for a customer's waste stream. Similarly, as industries become increasingly reliant upon recycled materials for their production, Northstar is actively seeking quality material to meet their needs.

Pulp & Paper
As the paper industry continues to consolidate, suppliers of secondary fibers face a competitive, unreliable and fluctuating market for their commodity. By providing the mills with the most reliable, consistent, pure product required for their specific operations, Northstar successfully trademarks its suppliers' secondary fiber. This creates a more stable market environment for their material. Superior supply side quality training and program performance monitoring have proved key components to the strength of Northstar's relationship with the mills.

Aluminum
The scrap metal industry has become increasingly specialized in order to channel quality product to customers with specific needs. Northstar, in its mission to provide a full service recycling program to its print and envelope customers, has specialized in the recycling of aluminum litho plate in order to maximize the waste management process for its clients while insuring a steady stream of quality material to its customers. Northstar is also actively involved in the recovery of aluminum beverage cans through its relationship with municipalities and has secured a steady network of end users for its UBC.

Plastics
The plastics recycling market is a growing market with greater process capacity and demand for recyclables than are recoverable through the general waste stream. Growth areas include producers of landscape, gardening, structural building materials and plastic grocer containers. The plastic lumber industry, which Northstar serves, is an expanding industry with testing of additional structural materials underway. Northstar has positioned itself as a pioneer in this industry, as evidenced through its strong relationship with major mattress manufacturers, established in order to provide a steady stream of polyethylene stretch film required of plastic lumber manufacturers.

Fabric and Foam
With the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding for Carpet Stewardship (MOU) on January 8, 2002, efforts are underway to increase the recycling of used carpeting from the current 4% to between 20% and 25% by the year 2012. The partnership of government and industry to adopt the stewardship of increased recycling of fibers has created a growing market for recycled carpet. Today, major companies are manufacturing construction sheeting, plastic lumber, GEO-Hay for erosion prevention and engineering resins from recycled fibers. Northstar has entered this market and with its extensive transportation network, and is positioned to work with your company to collect and distribute the fiber to the end users of this type of waste stream.