Another industry leader places its trust in GBalers

In the 1950s, Joseph John Garbarino started working at Marin Sanitary Service, San Rafael, California. Eventually, he bought out five of the seven partners and took control of the company with his cousin, also named Joe Garbarino. Who knew that Marin Sanitary and its subsidiaries would continue to revolutionize the waste and recycling industry more than seven decades later, but it is.

With an extensive range of services that includes dual-stream residential recycling collection, C&D Recycling, commercial and household municipal solid waste (MSW) collection and green waste recycling, the family of companies remains a true pioneer all while recycling some 67 percent of the materials it collects and processes at its facilities.

John Oranje, vice president of facilities for Marin and Joseph’s son-in-law, says part of the company’s success is selecting the best possible equipment for the job.

“When I joined the company in 1990, we had pretty rudimentary systems and equipment, but that’s the way recycling was back then," he says. "As equipment and technology have evolved, we’ve done our homework to secure the best possible equipment.”

Ten years ago, that entailed the purchase of two Commander auto-tie balers from GBaler USA.

“When they installed one of the machines in the area, GBaler invited me down to take a look. I went with two of my mechanics, and we were very impressed. After a couple more visits, we bought two of them,” Oranje says.

GBalers deliver

Those machines have been producing for the company ever since.

“We have an aggressive maintenance program here; we like to look after our equipment," Oranje says. "But the truth is, these machines have required very little. I’ve run balers from a wide range of suppliers and never experienced the consistent reliability we’ve had with the GBalers.”

Being a California-based company, export markets for recyclables are important.

“Our previous baler struggled and was not able to make export bales. With the GBalers, we consistently maximize our weights for 40-foot containers,” he says. “That’s important. More important, however, is we’re able to use the GBaler for everything.”

Marin bales nearly everything imaginable through its auto-tie single-ram GBalers. That range of commodities includes PET, natural and colored HDPE, mixed rigid plastics, aluminum, UBCs, tin cans, OCC, office pack, mixed paper and high-grade fiber. The company even has baled carpet padding.

“The machines make beautiful bales,” Oranje says. “We make weight for all materials, and the bales are tight and secure. For things like our plastics, we simply run an extra wire on the 1, 3 and 5 ties, and we’re good. The bales have perfect integrity.

“Because the machines are auto ties, we use black annealed wire, saving on wire costs. They are also much faster than two-rams, which delivers consistently higher production for us.”

Time for an upgrade

After 10 years of service, the two GBaler Commanders are in great shape but also fully depreciated. Marin needs added baling capacity, so the company has just upgraded to two GBaler Beasts. These 110,000-pound machines are high throughput auto-tie balers capable of baling 35 tons per hour of OCC.

“We’ve been so happy with the GBalers that we’re upgrading to larger machines,” Oranje says. “There are so many features on the GBaler that set it apart from other machines. Quality is built in from the ground up. That makes them easy to maintain and has given us extremely low operating costs. I don’t see another baler company offering anything close.”