Recycle, reuse, recover: Emerald Alaska gets down to the business of sustainability.

• Author: White, Rindi
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Environmental Services

Emerald Alaska, a multi-faceted waste management company celebrating fourteen years of working in Alaska, started simply, with one guy driving a truck and picking up used motor oil and other fluids for processing and recycling.

Their environmental waste business is growing--last year they processed 3.5 millions of gallons of oil/fuel, water, antifreeze, sludges, and solids at the company's Viking Drive facility in Anchorage. The company also manufactures several products for automotive maintenance and recently added another manufacturing line--diesel exhaust fluid, or DEF, which is used in newer diesel engines to reduce harmful emissions.

A Man, a Truck, and a Mission

The company was originally called Energy Recovery Services, owned and operated by Alaska resident Blake Hillis.

Emerald Alaska, Inc. was formed as the Alaska arm of Emerald Services, Inc. when the four hundred-employee family-owned company based in Seattle merged with Hillis's company in 2000 and kept him on as company president.

Today, nearly one hundred people work for the company in seven facilities throughout the entire state of Alaska. Company officials say Emerald Alaska is the largest locally operated full-service industrial and environmental services company in the state.

Emerald has a staggering list of services, from hazardous waste transportation and disposal and twenty-four-hour emergency spill cleanup to packing and shipping multiple laboratory chemicals to recycling and reusing petroleum oil, oily water, or mixed fuels for industrial burner fuel and other custom-blended fuel products to wastewater treatment. The company also manufactures and sells Magnum antifreeze and Sub Zero windshield washer fluids, as well as their new product, ArcticBlu DEF.

Locally Operated

The "locally operated" tag is something Emerald Alaska wears proudly. The company serves all sizes of business, from Fortune 500 companies to mom-and-pop businesses. But they place a big emphasis on customer service and finding solutions for customers.

"We've always based our business on the fact that we are local--you're not dealing with a national brand, we are your neighbors," says company director of sales and marketing Paul Nielsen.

Emerald serves companies of all sizes, as well as the federal, state, and municipal governments. It has term contracts with several federal agencies, including the DLA Disposition Services division of the Defense Logistics Agency, according to the company resume. It...