Windsor friends recycle 1 million kilos of plastic a month
Massey grads are behind Green Processing Company Inc.
When high school buddies Mohit Nayar, Sam Farhat and Jeremy Berger decided to start a company, it didn't take long.
"Everybody has a different story of how they started their business. Ours could be measured in hours. Literally, a phone call, a quick meeting the next morning, and the next day we had a business," Berger said.
Four years later that business is booming for the Vincent Massey Secondary School grads.
Green Processing Company Inc. is a recycling company that takes old industrial plastic from all over North America and turns it into pellets that can be remolded into new products.
The friends employ 50 people and have four plants; two in Windsor, one in Ohio and one in Texas.
It wasn't always that way. And it was never easy.
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"When we started, it was just the three of us," Farhat said. "And we were trying to kind of balance the office work with the plant related work, so we'd show up at 7 a.m. in the morning, and there was one point where we had to come in earlier, coming in at 6:30 a.m. to do the office related work, and then once we got to 5 p.m., we'd go out to the plant and do the labour related part."
The company deals mostly with leftover car parts and shipping crates. But they will process any kind of plastics, including toys.
Green Processing recycles nearly 1 million kilograms of plastics each month. The company also cleans or repairs thousands of plastic shipping containers each month.
And even though they have 8,000 square feet of office space in Windsor — and 64,000 square feet overall — they still like sharing an office.
Many people warned them about the dangers of partnership but the guys say it's actually the best part of the job.
"It's been amazing," Nayar said. "We've been doing it for over four years now and we've never had any major disagreements."
The partners are all home-grown Windsorites.
"It's really rewarding when you can say you have 50 people in a city you grew up in," Nayar said. "At the end of the year you have a Christmas party or a get-together and you see all these people come together, it's really rewarding for us."