The business of the blue boxinside a small town recycling company

The R and D Recycling plant is a kind of like a giant, well-sorted blue box.

Everything is put into towering piles.Plastic bottles, newspapers, aluminum cans.

"You're looking at garbage. For me, I see gold," says Jean-Luc Labonte, who has run the recycling company on the outskirts of North Bay for 20 years.

And some of those piles don't have any gold in them at all. Labonte says he doesn't make any money off the plastic shrink wrap and shredded paper he collects.

"Yes we are here to make money, but we believe in protecting the environment," he says.

The recycling comes from 50 small towns and First Nations across northern Ontario, who Labonte says could soon be paying more for his services, with commodity brokers paying 65 per cent less for recycled materials.

"It's a big game," says the 62-year-old."It was easier being younger because your nerves were better."

Click below to hear more, including Labonte's expensive attempt to keep more Styrofoam out of the local dump.