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Press Coverage
12/28/06 The Daily Courier:
YEI provides workforce at local recycling plant By Cindy Barks
Dewey - Brad Newman, executive director of Yavapai Exceptional Industries, sees a parallel between the attitudes people have about the participants in the YEI program and recycling.
Not long ago, Newman noted, it was the conventional wisdom that people with developmental disabilities were "discardable."
"Now we know that, with a little effort, they have a terrific contribution to make," he said of the scores of disabled people who regularlly work in a variety of jobs through YEI's program.
Newman added: "Recycling is the same thing - we used to throw the stuff away."
For the past several months, YEI has been sending five workers a day to the Mattera recycling plant in Dewey to help sort the thousands of tons of discarded but still usable materials that make their way there.
It is just one of about three dozen buseinsses all over the area that YEI partners with. But Newman maintains that recycling is an especially good fit: "There's a message in the medium " he said. "We're reclaiming and resorting a resource that would have been considered disposable."
On any given morning at Mattera Enterprises, the YEI workers stand alongside the conveyor belt, sorting out the valuable cardboard and other reclyclables making their way through the plant.
Both Newman and the company owner Joe Mattera say the YEI workers are well-suited for the task.
Overseen by YEI supervisor Jason Waddell, the workers have become an integral part of the operation, Mattera said.
"They show up every day and put the time in," he said. "They're workers."
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