Heartland Renaissance Fund of Little Rock, an affiliate of Arkansas Capital Corp., has received the 2015 Non-Metro Qualified Low Income Community Investment of the Year Award for its investment in Blue Oak Arkansas, an e-waste recycling project.
The award was presented to Heartland at the Novogradac New Market Tax Credit Conference in Chicago on Oct. 22. Heartland earned the award for using New Market Tax Credits to finance Blue Oak Arkansas, a facility in Osceola uses state-of-the-art furnaces designed to recover precious metals from e-waste and recycle them back into a useful product for future technologies.
The environmental impacts of the project include lower amounts of toxic waste in local landfills, Heartland said in a press release. Local benefits include the creation of 75 jobs with full benefits, a development strategy for hiring within the Osceola community, and a workforce training program provided in part by Arkansas Northeastern College, according to the release.
“Blue Oak makes social, environmental, and economic sense,” said Heartland President Sam Walls. “This technology is solving major environmental problems and is a viable business model.”