November 2020: CIRCON’s Midwest Facilities
What's News
This month, we'd like you to get to know our team members up in the Midwest. CIRCON operates a RCRA Part B-permitted centralized waste treatment facility in Hodgkins, Illinois, as well as an oil processing facility in Gary, Indiana. Prior to 2019, these facilities were operated by Beaver Oil, before it became a part of the CIRCON family. Now, these locations and teams are a vital part of our business, even if there are 1,000 miles separating them from our Texas HQ.
But in fact, that distance is exactly why these facilities and their expert teams are so valuable to CIRCON's mission. Expanding our geographic reach allows us to better serve our existing customers—many of whom also operate in the Midwest—and also allows us to connect with and serve new, regional clients. The benefits of partnering with CIRCON are great, regardless of geography: our solutions and proprietary technologies, along with our own transportation fleet and exemplary customer service, makes us a full-service provider, no matter where you're based.
Plus, our sustainable solutions, which stand out in any market, are a particularly unique offering in this part of the country. We're one of the few businesses providing our customers with a way to safely recycle and repurpose waste streams, creating new value for the industry and protecting our environment. CIRCON is proud to serve this market, and we're eager to show our customers why our offerings are a better way, and a better choice.
Did You Know?
Our Chicago-area facilities are currently designing modifications and improvements that will add even more services and solutions to our offering. We're working with the state of Illinois on a permit expansion for our hazardous containerized waste business, and plant to increase our storage capacity under one roof to more than 200,000 gallons—that's nearly 4,000 drums. Additionally, this permit will also allow us to utilize solidification pits to receive material in bulk or roll-offs, and de-characterize waste from hazardous to non-hazardous. That will help us better serve clients, speeding up our process while still achieving top results.
Three Questions with Bill Darling
Bill Darling is a General Manager with CIRCON, overseeing our Midwest operations and facilities. He chatted with us about why the region is a great place to provide our services as CIRCON continues to grow, and why the close-knit team within the company is great for employees—and our customers.
Why is it so important for CIRCON to have an established presence in this region of the country?
There's really not a lot of service providers here doing what Beaver oil started and succeeded at and achieved. So the opportunity to now put a footprint in the Midwest with CIRCON? It's extraordinary. We take a lot of fuels, and we sell them out for recycle/reclaim and resale. Not a lot of people are doing that in the Midwest—the closest I can think of is Indianapolis, and that's a couple hundred miles away. Customers are very satisfied when we're able to tell them that we're recycling their waste stream. That idea of the circular economy, where everything can be repurposed and nothing has a one-and-done use, that's what everyone wants in this day and age. Those four Rs that CIRCON is built on—recover, recycle, repurpose, results—represent a lot of opportunity in this region, for our company and our customers alike.
As CIRCON has been realigning sales teams to better serve customers, what does that mean for your branch and facilities? How do you and your team work with the folks at CIRCON's other locations and offices?
Most of our customers are local, but we do have quite a few crossover customers that operate in the metro Midwest as well as Houston, they're one in the same. I joined the company about a year ago, but because I'm fortunate enough to have 35 years in this industry, I knew people at all of the offices already, which made communication really seamless. And since, working with David Burkhardt and Wendy Mason and some of the other folks on the sales force down in Texas, we continually communicate—phone, email, whatever—to talk about opportunities up here that they can introduce their customers to. It's good communication from Chicago to Houston.
As someone with three decades of experience in the industry, what stands out about your first year with CIRCON?
Coming to CIRCON has been a refreshing experience. I have access to all of the resources and tools I need to do my job well, and the company functions like a close-knit community. That means that when I need to get something done, I know I can pick up the phone, speak to one of my colleagues who's an expert in that specific area, and get it done. Our employees never feel like just a number—and that goes for our clients, too. For example, at CIRCON, if you need to get a new waste-stream profile approved, I can literally get it done in five minutes. At other businesses, that might take seven to 10 days. And customers have realized that we've streamlined that service. Because if you don't have customer service, you have nothing.