Carving a Green Niche

It all started with a pile of discarded wood found in a backyard. About four years ago, Pierce Henley and his wife purchased a house in the Portland, Ore., area. In the clearing behind the house was a pile of firewood. As Henley tells it, the stack was heavy, high-quality wood and he wondered where it had originated. Upon further investigation, he learned that the previous homeowner had worked at the Port of Portland’s docks and apparently would bring home waste wood for his fireplace. The rest, as Henley and Joe Mitchoff, the founding partner and co-owner of Green Star International say, is history. Out of that “pile of interesting wood,” Mitchoff explained, the germ of an idea for a wood recycling business was born. “We made contact and cultivated a relationship with the port and got a contract with the right people at Jones Stevedoring right away,” Henley said. Both men feel they are on the cusp of the next great green thing that also stands to make them some money: recycling the wood dunnage, scrap steel and other waste items that arrive regularly from bulk and breakbulk vessels calling at two Port of Portland terminals. “We’ve built the business through luck and tenacity,” said Henley, whose background is in construction. Mitchoff has a background in real estate and is a LEED Accredited Professional. Green Star acts as a logistics intermediary between the port and recyclers through its contracts with Jones, waste-removal services and recycling firms. Green Star handles dimensional lumber, wood pieces, steel and steel cable, and actual garbage, such as newspapers and bottles, from the ships. Green Star uses subcontractors for the sorting and transfer to the recycling companies. It charges the stevedore for disposal. The wood, steel and other material is then sold to the recycling companies. The company, founded in 2004, has partnered with Jones Stevedoring at Portland’s Terminal 6. “We find homes for everything that comes to us,” Mitchoff said. Green Star recycles 99.5 percent of what is collected, he added. “Wood dunnage from ships is usually hauled off to a landfill because it’s so hard to get rid of,” Henley said. “That’s a tragedy.” All ports have environmental mandates and waste-reduction goals, but many are lax in the implementation, he said, or they simply don’t know how to efficiently factor in the recycling aspect of all that.