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Script: RMDZ Milestone Event--$100 Million Mark Celebrated at ersol Silicon

Margo Reid Brown, CIWMB Chair: It’s a great pleasure to celebrate the enduring success of a program like the Recycling Market Development Zone loan program. And how its strength has helped California green economy. We at the Board are pleased to be supporting their dream with a market development loan. ersol’s success demonstrates the critical role that market development loan programs play in helping this business grow and direct recyclable materials to secondary markets. The effort to build a resilient recycling industry here in California, is one reason why our state has become the nation's recycling leader, with a recovery rate today of nearly 60 percent!

Corky Mau (from the RMDZ program): The RMDZ program started in the early 1990s. And given the economic climate today for our businesses and the State of California, this program can be especially important. We actively promote and support a green economy. We provide direct loans to manufacturers located in California. By using recyclables as their feedstock such as this company, what this company and VAS does…they help collectively to divert 7 million tons, each year, form our California landfills. These businesses employ 9, 000 people and provide local sales tax and tax revenues to your communities. I’m proud to be with a program that supports entrepreneurship, green jobs, sustainable local economies, and creates regional and worldwide markets for our California recyclables.

Margo Reid Brown, CIWMB Chair: Today’s event marked the hundred million dollar mark for the Recycling Market Development Zone loan program. We actually celebrated a tremendous success in reaching the hundred million point, and we gave a check, a big check, to BAS recycling, the company that helped push us over the hundred million dollar mark. We also celebrated ersol Silicon, which is a tremendous success, when the Board gave them a loan, and they have taken a waste stream and made a global commodity that is sought after to help advance the Governor’s solar roof initiative and solar energy throughout the state. So it’s a partnership of working with local businesses, our zone administrators and the private sector to take waste materials and viable markets and we’re proud of the part we’re playing in helping make alternative energy, and alternative fuels come to market here in California

Gary Petersen, CIWMB Board Member: This is one of my favorite programs of the Board, because, it starts the market development here in California, building the green jobs. We do all the collection, but this does the recycling, this makes the product and that’s why the RMDZ was put together and it’s a great program.

Rob Bushman, President ersol Silicon: ersol Silicon started as Silicon Recycling Services in 1996. In 1995, when I was doing my recycling under a company called California Public Recycling in Oxnard, I picked up Siemens Solar as one of my scrap accounts to help them with diversion from landfills and try to recycle some materials and when I saw the silicon that they were throwing in the landfill, I asked them to give me an opportunity to try to clean it to be reused and that was the direction that we went with.

Rob Bushman, President ersol Silicon: Without the RMDZ, (1) we wouldn’t be standing her today, but, (2) SRS- ersol Silicon- would not be in business. This is exactly what an entrepreneur like myself needed, was, was somebody to believe in our idea in our concept and to give us a chance to be able to turn around and convert this trash to a treasure, and, like David said earlier on, not only has it gone from being something that was diverted from the landfill, but is an extremely, extremely valuable commodity today.

Margo Reid Brown, CIWMB Chair: the RMDZ program is a perfect example of how public private partnership can help advance green technology in our State and move materials out of the waste stream into viable manufacturing businesses.