Learning Recycling in Richmond

Men wearing T-shirts and jeans quietly went about their work at Bluegrass Regional Recycling Corp. on a recent sunny afternoon.

Inside the processing plant, just past a cardboard box full of tiny, plastic pieces from shredded milk jugs, four guys pulled the wrapping off black rubber gloves that Marines use to handle chemicals.

Other workers eventually will operate the machines that grind the gloves, and similar boots, into rubber mulch used on playgrounds and on a path that circles the corporation’s career development center, which sits nearby on the same four acres.

Outside, a man used white paint to touch up a wooden fence that surrounds the center. Another man worked alone on a farm behind the building, preparing to plant more corn. Afterward, he went to eat in the cafeteria, where men in white chef hats prepare fresh food while participating in a culinary arts program. Several others took college classes in a computer lab at the center.  Sounds like a bunch of care-free adult students, not a bunch of prison inmates