OmahaNebraska.com Interview with Patrick Leahy, CEO of Firstar Fiber
Please tell me a little bit about your journey here and what you did before coming here.
After college I worked in politics for U.S. senator Ben Nelson. Through there, I got some roles in non profit, in fundraising, consulting.
And that’s where I met the owner and founder of Firstar Recycling, Mr. Dale Gubbels. And when he was looking to retire, I was looking for a new challenge and he gave it to me.
How did that prepare you for your role now?
I think recycling, even though it’s about materials, aluminum cans, plastic bottles, cardboard, it’s very much a people business, whether it’s community relationships, business relationships, relationships with the mills. So the politics aspect, just being able to work with people from all different stripes and from different interests has helped out.
And then to recycle right, you really need strong processes. We need a good mix of workers and equipment doing the right things. And I think my background in the military brings those two things together.
What did you do in the military?
A little bit of everything. My main job is nuclear, biological and chemical, weapons, so that’s intelligence and nuclear weapons.
So then you’re very familiar with all the toxic aspects of the materials.
Yes. There’s nothing here quite like that.
Of course, yes.
I don’t want to equate those two. Yes. But ” safety first” is definitely a motto in the military. Risk mitigation. And I would say that translates in the recycling manufacturing industry is “safety first”.
So, that must have been a huge priority when you took over.
Yes, yes. I think there was already a strong foundation in the culture. But the recycling industry as a whole sees challenges with fires, especially fires related to lithium ion batteries. It’s something that no matter if you have a strong foundation in safety, you can always do better and you always need to keep it going.
There are so many different types of plastics. How do you sort those so they become different products?
The sortation process is in all of the above. You have the manual – human beings doing it. You have mechanical equipment and machinery helping with the sortation process, using gravity, weights, stuff like that. You also have the AI Machine Learning, robotics that are scanning things and looking at it from the material composition is inserting. It’s all three that are at play in our process to get you a good clean product. Only number one, it’s only number two. So only a certain kind.
On the AI side, are they testing the materials and using computer vision or how is that done?
Some of it’s pre-programmed and then it’s learning what things look like along the way and updating itself, to get better at a capture. It’s just using either infrared or color spectrum to make those calls as well as size.
What different types of things would you like people to know about your company that maybe they should know already and then also what they might not know.
I’m going to say about the industry, first. I think people should know why recycling is different in different locations because every recycling center is set up to handle things in a different way. Always check with your local recycling center or your local agency or government to determine what you can recycle. So you can make sure that you recycle. Because there’s nothing worse than people putting something in the cart that they think is recycled, but it’s not. It just ends up causing the system problems, slowing things down and costing more money back.
So, that’s the first thing I’d say is look to your local entity to recycle.
About Firstar specifically, I would say what makes this unique, in addition to just being a great culture, great people, is we take both commercial and residential single stream at the same facility in the same process.
We do it about half and half. Typically, recycling centers will focus on one or the other, but we’re doing both.
On top of that – with what we’re doing with our plastic feed processing and making the lumber – we’re one of the first material recovery facilities that’s vertically integrated. And we prove that this would be a model that others will follow over time.
So, that’s the two things that really make us unique.
Are you going to be building, depending on how these tests go, a plant in Hawaii and other places? Or are you going to be working with something that’s existing there?
Both. We may not be the ones that build it, but we may, whether it is licensing out our process or franchising it out. What we would prefer to do is work with a local partner because your local partner will have an understanding of the community, the government agencies involved, the construction firms like the end consumer of the product over the number of pallets, floor mats or ground mats, whatever. So it would definitely be a partnership. Who that partner is … ?
Thank you.
Firstar Fiber, Inc.
dba First Star Recycling
10330 “I” Street
Omaha, NE 68127
(402) 894-0003
https://www.firststarrecycling.com/
