Volunteers needed to process materials at Clover Recycling in western Warren
The owner of a Trumbull County recycling center is looking for fellow businesses to join her in the 80,000-square-foot facility, with options for an artist loft-style space, an event center and brewery.
Jenny Smith is the CEO of Clover Recycling in Warren, which was founded in 1972 and is the oldest recycling center in the U.S.
“I’ve been recycling since I was little, way before it was cool,” she said. “It initially started as a nonprofit in Howland, and in the mid-1980s, that organization reached out to my dad, who had a small scrapyard in Niles off of Thomas Road. They asked him to take over the management of that recycling center facility, which he did.”
In 2021, Smith purchased the Howland business from her dad. In 2023, she relocated Clover Recycling into the larger space in Warren.
“We specifically were looking for an industrial property that was on the edge of residential, so people didn’t have a lot of intimidation of driving through a strong industrial area,” Smith said. “But we also wanted a space that was all on one floor, so people didn’t have to come up curbs or ramps. It’s worked out really well, and we have a lot of parking we utilize.”
Smith said Clover Recycling occupies about one-fifth of the property at 1411 West Market St., while the rest of the space is up for grabs.
“There’s an office building which can be made into an artist loft kind of thing,” she said. “We’re looking for a contractor or a company to provide a brewery or a tap room that’s looking for an industrial theme. We also have an event center space that we are looking to get finalized. It would be the largest event center in Warren - about 200 feet long and about 70 feet wide.”
She’s also looking for volunteers of all ages and abilities to help process materials. Clover Recycling accepts donations of materials made of glass, plastic, metal, wire and paper, in addition to books, cardboard, batteries and electronics.
“Our goal is to make sure that if we decide on accepting an item, we’re not going to change our mind later. I make sure that the majority of the material that we take here is actually recyclable,” Smith said. “We spend a lot of time determining the buyer market for the material, and if there’s more than one buyer, we first look for buyers within the state of Ohio, and then, and then we look for veteran own or nonprofits outside of Ohio.”
The recycling center follows a business model based on a four-leaf clover, where they’ll reuse, recreate, then repurpose, and finally, recycle materials.
“The majority of the items we sell for 50 cents a pound,” Smith said. “Everybody’s happy: the people that want to keep it out of the landfill are happy it stayed out of the landfill. The people buying it are super excited to get it, so it’s a win all around. We usually get people who are very excited to be here coming in to shop or recycle here.”
Since the beginning of 2026, Clover Recycling has recycled nearly 200,000 pounds of material, according to Smith.
“That’s just the material that we’ve sold to keep our doors open. It doesn’t include the material that we’ve processed and are holding for sale,” she said. “We do a lot of community involved events, like we have a free craft night on Thursday nights where we teach people to make crafts out of recycled material, and we provide the instruction and the materials.”
When customers first come into the facility, Smith said they’ll see big bales of material on hold for pricing and pickup by potential buyers.
“We have a significant amount of material in this building, but we pride ourselves on how clean and organized it is,” she said. “Most people, when they come in, they think that they’re in the wrong place.”
Smith said some materials are more challenging to repurpose than others, like computer monitors.
“We have to pay 55 cents a pound for those to be recycled. Now we’re able to generate enough revenue to offset the cost of recycling those monitors and computers.,” she said. “Everything that we accept here we don’t charge for. We also don’t limit people on volume, and we don’t restrict people based on location or whether they’re a business or industry.”
Many customers who come to Clover Recycling want to learn more about how recycling actually works in their community.
“Clover prevents materials from going to the Trumbull County landfills. So even if we’re not worried about the world, we’re at least worried about our community. We know that our landfill space is limited. From a business perspective, it can reduce your waste costs. If you don’t want your trash service bill to go astronomical, we’ll continue to keep that stuff out of the landfill,” Smith said.
Clover Recycling is open to the public from 11 a.m. - 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
“Our goal for this coming summer is to get our glass crusher up and running, and we’re one step closer to getting our plastic extruder up and running,” Smith said. “It heats up plastic, then makes it like a liquid, kind of toothpaste. It essentially closes the loop on that recycling of that single use plastic.”
