Thousands of old EverBank stadium seats find new life at Big Iron Recycling, where crews dismantle them for materials while acknowledging fans’ nostalgia.<\/p>\n
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 If you\u2019ve ever sat in an EverBank stadium seat cheering on your team, you might be surprised to see where thousands of those seats end up after they\u2019re removed.<\/p>\n
Right now, stacks of old stadium seats sit piled high at Big Iron Recycling, Inc., and crews are working through them one by one.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got just hard labor out here,\u201d said Eric Gibson, vice president of Big Iron Recycling. \u201cWe\u2019re all just kind of team up and run through it with impact guns and take it all apart by hand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Taking apart thousands of seats is no small task.<\/p>\n
Gibson said the project started about three months ago, and the team is now close to wrapping things up.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we are about 90% done with this,\u201d Gibson said. \u201cIt\u2019s been a hurdle, but it\u2019s been somewhat profitable, close to a break-even situation, but we\u2019re almost done.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company partnered with Waste Pro after other scrap yards turned the job down.<\/p>\n
Each seat is made up of multiple materials, including plastic, cast iron, and stainless steel, and workers separate each piece so it can be recycled.<\/p>\n
Buckets of bolts, piles of plastic, and stacks of heavy metal parts fill the yard as crews take the seats apart.<\/p>\n
And when it comes to the cast iron pieces, Gibson says that\u2019s where the real value is.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the money for us,\u201d Gibson said. \u201cThis is what makes it profitable to our company.”<\/p>\n
For many people, these seats hold sentimental value, memories of big games, concerts, and special moments.<\/p>\n
While the focus is recycling, Gibson said the company understands the interest from people hoping to hold onto a piece of history.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf someone\u2019s interested, they could reach out to Big Iron Recycling, and maybe we\u2019ll entertain them,\u201d Gibson said. \u201cBut we\u2019re not set up as a retail store. We\u2019re here to recycle the material.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thousands of old EverBank stadium seats find new life at Big Iron Recycling, where crews dismantle them for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-216776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}