Bullets – millions and millions of them – are the target of an Arvada company seeking to alleviate a national shortage of ammunition.
Metals Treatment Technologies specializes in recovering spent lead from military, law enforcement and civilian firing ranges.
Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are firing more than 1 billion rounds a year, contributing to an ammo shortage for police training across the U.S. and higher prices for hunters and recreational shooters.
“It has been estimated there could be as much as a 15-year supply of lead buried in the nation’s 10,000 firing ranges,” said James Barthel, president and CEO of Metals Treatment Technologies. “A massive effort to recover that wasted resource will not only eventually relieve the shortage of domestic ammunition but will also result in a cleaner environment.”
The firm has recovered about 560,000 pounds of bullets this year.
In addition to lead recovery and recycling, technicians at the company’s Arvada lab test soil samples to confirm remediation of toxic lead residues.
