Building an empire on bottle returns

NEW WINDSOR – Gurminder “Raj” Singh Chilana works hard to give his customers easy money.

The Bottle Depot owner has grown the chain to 13 locations since opening his first storefront in 2012 near New York Stewart International Airport in New Windsor, while navigating a vast sea of state regulations for recycling businesses.

Now, he's planning to open seven new locations in 2020, across his home counties of Orange, Sullivan and Ulster. And after he reaches 20 stores, he plans to franchise the business to share his expertise with other prospective recycling chain operators.

Chilana, 49, of Pine Bush, and his wife, Preeti, 44, who helps him run the business, have copied a model that's popular in New York City, but it's surprisingly uncommon in the mid-Hudson.

They open storefronts, letting customers dump recyclable bottles onto tables. Bottle Depot employees sort them and give on-the-spot cash - 5 cents for each bottle - to customers.

Employees then call the businesses that sell those brands, because they're obligated to pick up the bottles for recycling. They pay Bottle Depot a 5-cent reimbursement for each bottle, plus a state-set fee.

On a recent weekday at the Town of Wallkill Bottle Depot, Paul Brenner said he's been using the store every week for three years, because supermarket bottle redemption machines are slow, smelly and they fill up quickly. Plus, retailers only accept the brands they sell, meaning Brenner used to have to go to multiple stores to redeem bottles.

Bottle Depot “just makes it a lot easier for us, and it's so much more convenient,” Brenner said. “I have a pacemaker, and (Bottle Depot) saves me from having to count. The employees are very pleasant and very respectful.”

Chilana said he and Preeti never expected to live the America dream quite so fully, with a booming business, when the couple emigrated from India “for more opportunity” in 1998.

He said franchising his business makes sense because he anticipates potential competitors seeing his success and wanting to try their luck.

He got the idea to open the recycling business while working at his first job at a Citgo, now a Getty gas station on Route 209 by the airport, because customers kept trying to redeem the bottles.

The only issue? Besides myriad state regulations Chilana said he navigates, the Bottle Depot owner is lobbying state legislators to increase the state-mandated fee he collects from the companies picking up the recyclables. Chilana said his success is no mystery.

“People love our locations,” Chilana said. There's “no stink, it's neat and clean, we have good customer service, you don't have to take a receipt and go on customer service lines, and we don't have a (bottle) limit.”

daxelrod@th-record.com

Omny - https://omny.fm/shows/newscycle/playlists/podcast/embed?style=cover&size=square