July/August
2018
ISRI’s
2018 convention and exposition drew nearly 5,500 attendees to Las Vegas in
April to find winning moves in an era of game-changing events.
The stakes always seem higher in Las Vegas, but 5,500 scrap
recyclers bet wisely by attending ISRI2018 in April. The sold-out exhibit hall
offered an abundance of business-boosting technologies, services, and ideas,
and the event’s many education sessions and networking opportunities allowed
attendees to focus their attention in the most productive ways. The heart of
the industry also shone through this year in the generosity of those donating
and bidding on silent auction items for the Recycling Research Foundation,
which raised nearly $40,000. Convention organizers fine-tuned the convention’s
general, spotlight, and education sessions up to the last minute to ensure
attendees would get the latest news and analysis on swiftly changing global
market conditions.
General Sessions Focus on Trade, Technology, and
Transportation
International trade issues—not just from China, but also from
other regions—were a major focus of ISRI2018. So, too, were the new and
emerging technologies promising to alter the playing field for recyclers, as well
as the many urgent transportation and logistics issues scrap businesses are
facing.
China changes the game—again. Recyclers who once relied on
Chinese buyers to import their scrap are scrambling to find new domestic and
international markets while shouldering the associated shipping costs.
Panelists at a session to help recyclers navigate China’s new market conditions
described how their companies have changed the way they do business since China
enacted new import restrictions and low contamination thresholds for most scrap
commodities.
“On the West Coast, we were reliant on China. We relied on cheap
freight, and [China’s] consumption, and that has now put us in a tight spot,”
said Vinod
Singh, outreach manager at Far West Recycling (Portland, Ore.). “Now
we are sending 10 loads here, 10 loads there to domestic mills. It’s our goal
to seed domestic growth.”
Queen City Metal Recycling & Salvage (Charlotte, N.C.) also
is working to find new domestic markets for items such as low-grade copper
wire, said General Manager Steve Gilbert. It plans to send previously China-bound
motors to markets in Europe and Pakistan.
Shen
Dong, director of international marketing for OmniSource Corp.
(Fort Wayne, Ind.), said Category 7 metals—including motors, meatballs, insulated
wire, and some mixed metal scrap—are still allowed into China now, but it’s
likely the country will ban that scrap by the end of 2018.
As recyclers who once relied on shipping to China scramble to
find alternative international markets, they also must deal with the often
higher shipping costs and difficult logistics associated with those markets,
said Chad
Hansen, national sales manager for Sealink International (Plano,
Texas), a logistics provider. “When new emerging markets come around, everyone
tries to move cargo there, and these vessels fill up and you can’t get space,”
he said. Those lucky enough to get bookings should plan to wait longer for
their booking to go through, he added.
Abandoned containers are another issue that can hit companies in the
pocketbook, Hansen said. Vietnamese ports, for example, are beginning to
require security deposits of up to $3,000 per container to return them clean
and undamaged, he said. “There are thousands [of containers] sitting at ports
right now, and the problem is people are not picking them up.”
Finding new opportunities globally. “If the Chinese scrap
market sneezes, we all get a cold,” said Surendra Borad Patawari,
chairman of Gemini Corp. (Antwerp, Belgium), during a session on opportunities
in global trade. Looking elsewhere for buyers can be disruptive in the near
term, but it could mean good future business, he said. India, for example,
imports $1 billion in scrap each year and has an economy predicted to grow by 7
or 8 percent in 2018, he said. If India truly wants to grow its reputation as a
major scrap recycler, however, it will have to relax some of its import
restrictions, he noted.
Meanwhile, the Middle East is learning to recycle domestically
the materials it once sent to China, said Salam Sharif, chairman of
Sharif Metals International (Sharjah, United Arab Emirates) and president of
the Bureau of Middle East Recycling (Dubai, UAE). Copper, aluminum, and other
materials can feed infrastructure in rapidly urbanizing Middle Eastern cities,
he said.
These changing markets also give Latin America a window to show
off its business-friendly assets, such as low costs and conveniently located
ports, which allow shipments “to get anywhere in 60 to 90 days,” said Enrique Acosta,
partner in BMB Metals (Miami). “South America is always seen as an export
opportunity, but we have considerable infrastructure for manufacturing and
processing” as well as readily available logistics and transportation
resources, he said.
In Europe, Jurgen Van Gorp, business development and area manager at
Metallo Group (Beerse, Belgium), said his company has survived intense
competition with China by creating a niche and sticking with it. “Europe has
had a longstanding history [and] reputation with manufacturing and recycling,
but today, the European markets try to lead by innovation,” he said.
The South Pacific had a competitive strategy before China’s major
market shake-up, said Korina Kirk, director of Metalcorp NZ (Christchurch, New
Zealand) and president of the Scrap Metal Recycling Association of New Zealand
(Hornby, New Zealand). Australia and New Zealand are “out of the way” of some
global markets and are export-dependent, “so it is all about the drive for
quality,” she said. “We’re known for it, and we’re fiercely committed to it.”
Think regionally, act cautiously. Former U.S. Secretary of
Commerce Carlos
Gutierrez gave scrap recyclers his perspective on trade issues at
the convention’s opening general session. Overall, the world isn’t globalizing
so much as it is “regionalizing,” he said.
Gutierrez said the United States’ decision to leave the
Trans-Pacific Partnership “was a strategic mistake” because Asia contains 60
percent of the world’s population and the fastest-growing economies. Our
leaving TPP left U.S. allies confused, he said, and it allowed China to form
more alliances with countries participating in the agreement.
With the current potential for near-term trade disruptions and
uncertainty, Gutierrez advised scrap recyclers to be cautious in their
decisionmaking, such as in locating facilities or making supply-chain changes.
“Don’t make a strategic decision if you don’t have to,” he said. Companies
should have their own foreign policy, he suggested. Know who your allies
are—and your adversaries—so you can separate yourself from the pack.
Gutierrez also cautioned that trade isn’t the only big issue
companies have to think about. Even more important, he said, are the new
technologies coming at us—such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the
Internet of Things, and blockchain—that could result in the potential loss of
millions of jobs. “Increase the digital IQ of your firm,” he advised.
The rise of the machines. ISRI2018’s closing general
session speaker, technology journalist David Pogue, continued the
technology conversation by predicting how the next wave of technology will
change the way we live. On the frontiers of technology are driverless cars,
delivery drones, and robots that can shut off nuclear reactors or perform other
complicated tasks on their own. “I always thought robots were cool,” Pogue
said, but the cool factor comes with important questions about how rapidly
improving technology will affect the economy and jobs. By one estimate, robots
could replace 47 percent of American jobs in the next 20 years, he said. But
don’t despair just yet. With the rise of such technology, humans may start
doing jobs that don’t yet exist, he added. “When you think of it, most of what
we do today barely existed 100 years ago.”
REMADE Institute advances recycling technologies. Launched
in January, the REMADE Institute (West Henrietta, N.Y.) aims to improve the
production and processing of materials, advance design-for-recycling
principles, create high-paying jobs, and enhance U.S. competitiveness, said David Wagger,
ISRI’s chief scientist and director of environmental management. REMADE, which
stands for Reducing Embodied-energy and Decreasing Emissions, is a network of
government, academic, and private-sector partners—including ISRI, which
represents the recycling industry in the REMADE leadership team.
The institute’s efforts to develop recycling technology will
focus on processing metals, polymers, electronics, and fiber, said Eric Peterson,
REMADE’s node leader for recycling and recovery. Leading initial projects in
these areas are Argonne National Laboratory (polymers), the University of Miami
(fiber), and the University of Utah (e-scrap). Researchers aim to develop
technologies for separating and cleaning materials and learning where energy
losses occur in the process.
The industry needs new sorting technologies, but it also needs to
consider the marketing side, said Philippe Blot, co-founder and
senior metallurgical engineer of EDX Magnetics (Salt Lake City). “Can we build
something industry can afford?” He described prototype technologies for sorting
aluminum alloys his team tested successfully, producing a No. 2–type of copper
product out of high-density mixed nonferrous red metals (ISRI specification
Zebra), but their work with shredded mixed nonferrous metals high in aluminum
(Zorba) so far has had mixed results, Blot reported. ReMA members can assist
projects such as his by providing samples of materials they are not currently
processing, he noted. “We want to test on a variety of samples to develop
standards,” he said. ReMA members can help REMADE “know what you know so we can
start investigating alternative methods to upgrade your products,” Peterson
added, with the goal being to keep embedded energy out of landfills.
Transportation faces safety, labor issues. A panel discussion
about challenges facing the trucking and rail industries focused on the need to
recruit the next generation of workers in both industries. Panelists were Bill Sullivan,
executive vice president of advocacy of the American Trucking Associations, and
Mike Peters,
senior vice president of real estate and industrial development of Genesee
& Wyoming railroad, with outgoing ReMA Chair Mark Lewon of Utah Metal Works
(Salt Lake City) serving as moderator. The trucking sector also now faces
hassles related to throughput rates at ports, as well as concerns regarding
future self-driving truck technology, the panelists noted. Both the trucking
and rail industries have also raised red flags about marijuana and its effects
on worker performance and safety.
Also at the transportation spotlight, Jack Van Steenburg, chief
safety officer of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, briefed
attendees on the latest safety statistics and federal rulemaking. The fatality
rate for large trucks and buses has risen for the past couple of years,
totaling 4,317 fatalities—including 722 truck driver deaths—in 2017, he said.
FMCSA’s goal is to have zero fatalities related to large trucks and buses
across the United States by 2050, he said. Encouraging signs toward that goal
include an 85-percent rate for seat-belt use among drivers of large trucks.
Scrap Metals in the Spotlight
The metals spotlight sessions and targeted education sessions
helped attendees dive more deeply into topics directly relevant to their
businesses.
Global economy, Chinese policies concern aluminum panelists. Macroeconomic
factors were weighing on the mind of Jason Schenker, president of
Prestige Economics (Austin, Texas), at the aluminum spotlight. “I’ve never seen
the kind of volatility, uncertainty, and risk as what’s going on right now,”
and not just in the metals market, he said.
“The global economy is what will drive prices” for metal
commodities, he said. Weighing on global growth are increasing labor costs,
which Schenker called “the camel’s nose under the tent. There’s more inflation
to come,” and it will likely result in higher interest rates.
Another concern, he said, is that “the tit-for-tat escalation in
tariff retaliations … could slow growth overall.” Tariffs, as well as supply
disruptions such as this spring’s U.S. sanctions on Russian aluminum producer
Rusol (Moscow), leave “the global economic outlook a bit more in doubt.”
Official GDP growth forecasts from the Federal Reserve and International
Monetary Fund don’t take into account trade risks, he cautioned.
A final macroeconomic factor Schenker noted was U.S. productivity
growth of zero in the fourth quarter of 2017. “Even if everything were perfect
with trade, companies are facing higher labor costs, no productivity gains,
higher interest rates, and higher materials costs,” he said. It’s hard for him
“to see the upside with so many cost pressures rising.”
Liu
Wei, director of industry research at the China Nonferrous Metals
Industry Association, Recycling Metals Branch (Beijing), speaking about China’s
implementation plan on “solid waste” imports, including scrap, confirmed that
China will ban imports of “Category 7” aluminum scrap by the end of the year.
This will affect an estimated half-million tons of material, he said. The
policy’s goal is “to stop the import of ‘solid waste’ which can be replaced by
domestic scrap by the end of 2019,” Liu said, but China’s domestic supply of
aluminum scrap can only fill 70 percent of its demand, and its aluminum
production is growing 7 percent a year. Thus, he said, “China will need to
import some aluminum scrap in the future.”
Liu also noted the confusion over the new policy’s limits on
“carried waste.” The definition in the plan is “not very detailed or specific,”
he said, but he explained the phrase means a “foreign substance introduced,
excluding packaging material.”
The 25-percent tariffs China imposed on imports of U.S. aluminum
scrap—in response to U.S. tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum—are increasing
costs by about 3,000 RMB per container, Liu said, making it likely that U.S.
exports of aluminum scrap to China will decline. Chinese aluminum consumers are
looking for alternative suppliers and more domestic sources, he noted.
Moderator Matt Kripke, president of Kripke Enterprises (Toledo,
Ohio), also spoke about recyclers’ concerns about new alloys entering the
aluminum scrap stream from vehicle manufacturing that are finding few
interested buyers. (For more on this topic, read “Light Speed” on page 42.)
Ferrous focuses on technology and trade. Changes in
steelmaking are affecting the ferrous scrap market, as are shipping issues that
hamper trade, said panelists at the ferrous spotlight session.
U.S. steelmakers rely heavily on electric-arc furnace technology,
with almost two-thirds of the country’s steel made using EAFs, said Philip K. Bell,
president of the Steel Manufacturers Association (Washington, D.C.). Yet scrap’s
metallurgical chemistry can vary widely, and steelmakers are showing more
interest in other steel inputs, such as direct-reduced iron and hot briquetted
iron, to keep quality up. “Obsolete scrap is a growing percentage of overall
scrap, and that’s not a good thing” because it brings down the overall chemical
quality of ferrous scrap, he said. While that will be a challenge for
recyclers, Bell said growth in U.S. EAF capacity is likely to keep up the
demand for scrap. “Scrap is going to continue to be the primary raw material
for EAFs,” he said.
In the past year, the spread between the cost of finished steel
and the cost of ferrous scrap has been wider than usual, said Sean Davidson,
metal prices editor for Argus Media. Yet he noted that it was “a good year for
U.S. [ferrous] exports, having bounced back from a poor 2015.” That’s despite
the industry facing significant shipping woes such as canceled or rerouted
cargo ships. Nathan
Fruchter, CEO of Idoru Recycling Corp. (Lawrence, N.Y.), advised
the audience to look carefully at shipping contract language that could cost
them money if their shipments get delayed. Exporters should consider penning a
new clause for their contracts that can protect them from absorbing costs when
a shipping problem is outside their control. “It’s difficult to introduce a new
clause [during business transactions], but every seller should push for this
for their own protection,” Fruchter said.
Steel consumers set more specific quality demands. As steel
mills and foundries create more advanced, custom alloys for their customers,
they are demanding specific steel scrap chemistries, said speakers at “The
State of the Ferrous Industry: A View from the Mills.” At Neenah Foundry
(Neenah, Wis.), its products range from manhole covers to safety-critical parts
for military and commercial vehicles, said Brett Fisher, vice president of
operations. It makes 10 different grades of gray iron and 50 grades of ductile
iron, each with its own mechanical and heat-treatment properties. To achieve
those targeted chemistries, foundries want scrap with low residual alloys, good
density, and consistency of size, density, and chemistry, he said. The input
materials—steel scrap and pig iron as well as coke and limestone—must dilute
the residual element chemistries it creates for each customer, Fisher
explained, such as by reducing levels of phosphorus, manganese, boron, and tin.
He reviewed the positive and negative effects of a variety of residual metals,
noting that antimony, lead, and boron are especially problematic. “We need
scrap that doesn’t have high levels of those elements,” he said.
Steel mills are getting equally demanding in terms of wanting
specific chemistries, said Jim Wiseman, executive vice president of Smart Recycling
Management (Nicholasville, Ky.). “It’s complex. I’m not a metallurgist, but you
learn as you go,” he said. He predicts mills soon will “need to know
everything”—such as levels of residuals, the chemistry, and the
composition—about steel scrap supply shipments, whether shredded or plate and
structural. Scrap recyclers will find it difficult to provide that information,
however, due to the variability of input materials and environmental
conditions, he said.
When supplying steel to foundries and mills, “knowledge is going
to be power,” said moderator David Borsuk of Sadoff Iron & Metal Co. (Fond du Lac,
Wis.), and control of scrap chemistries is becoming more and more important.
Better source control and process control will be essential, he said. Wiseman
suggested scrap consumers could help educate processors and traders about what
they want and don’t want. Ultimately, the costs of greater scrap analysis and
testing “will have to be absorbed in how you buy [scrap],” Wiseman said.
Copper spotlight assesses China’s effects. China has a
sizable impact on U.S. scrap copper markets, panelists at the copper spotlight
session observed. That country consumed about 68 percent of U.S. scrap copper
exports last year, according to Joe Pickard, ISRI’s chief
economist and director of commodities. Shipments to China in January and
February 2018 were down nearly 27 percent compared with the same period in
2017, and that’s before China tightened contamination standards March 1.
Perhaps not surprisingly, while copper exports to China slipped, other export
markets showed growth, he said, with exports to Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Japan
experiencing the largest gains. Secondary refined copper production has been
increasing globally, rising 4.5 percent from 2016 to 2017.
The panelists discussed whether a new copper secondary smelter
will come online in the United States. “The costs of getting that going, and
the environmental and regulatory burdens, are quite high,” Pickard said.
“A secondary copper smelter is absolutely vital to the welfare of
the United States,” said Tim Strelitz, president of California Metal-X (Los
Angeles). There is “money to be had” in that business, he said, which is why it
exists in countries such as Germany, Spain, and Belgium—countries with
regulatory measures as tough as the United States.
U.S. technology for copper processing and refining lags other
countries, said Ed Meir, a consultant with INTL FCStone (New York). “The
Chinese have a big edge on very technologically advanced plants,” and they
don’t have same oversight burden, although that is changing, he said. Pickard
believes the United States will experience more investment in processing
technology. “We’re going to have to process this material to a higher grade
than we have before,” he said.
Electronics spotlight looks at precious metals. Mark Caffarey,
executive vice president of Umicore USA (Raleigh, N.C.), said he sees the China
situation creating opportunities to do more domestic processing and sorting of
electronic scrap, creating U.S. jobs.
Peter
Jegou, president of All Green Precious Metal Recovery (Charlotte,
N.C.), described his company’s hydrometallurgical technique for processing
circuitboards as a way to create “conflict-free” gold, palladium, silver, and
other precious metals. The company’s proprietary technology is modular and
scalable, he said.
Puneet
Shrivastava, regulatory engineering adviser for Dell, noted there
is 800 times more gold in circuitboards than in gold ore. Dell’s closed-loop
gold program mines its own manufacturing streams for raw materials. With
recycling partner Wistron GreenTech (Texas) Corp. (McKinney, Texas), it is
recycling the gold from recovered motherboards into its Latitude 5285 2-in-1
laptop/tablet computer. (ISRI also took note of the product’s recyclability and
presented Dell with its 2018 Design for Recycling® Award. See page
80.)
Processors fight for the right to repair.
The right to repair and resell electronic products is growing in importance as
more consumer goods contain electronics, said panelists at the session “The
Path Forward: Reuse.” The environmental benefits of reuse are greater than
those of recycling, noted Corey Dehmey, R2 director for Sustainable Electronics
Recycling International (Hastings, Minn.), and reuse could “unlock $4.5
trillion of economic growth and reduce the digital divide in the United States
and other countries.” The R2 standard, which SERI manages, requires
prioritizing reuse over recovery.
But in the United States, “technology is legally encumbered” by
trademark, copyright, and patent laws, all of which “put limits on what you can
do with a device,” said Jeff Pearlman, clinical supervising attorney and lecturer
in the Julesgaard Intellectual Property and Innovation Clinic at Stanford Law
School (Stanford, Calif.). “Today, everything has software and is connected to
the Internet,” he pointed out. Your phone, security system, car, tractor,
refrigerator, and GPS device are “all illegal, potentially, to modify.”
When Congress passed the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act,
it created a process for receiving exemptions—which allow copyright protections
to be broken for specific products and uses—but they’re only good for three
years, and renewing is just as hard as getting the exemption in the first
place, Pearlman said. “It’s difficult to build standards and best practices
when things change every three years,” he added. ReMA worked to achieve an
exemption that allows cellphone “jailbreaking” for using phones with other
wireless providers. That exemption, first granted in 2006, now applies to
tablets, hotspots, and wearable devices, but only to used devices, he said.
Activists are promoting right-to-repair laws in states across the
country, said Kyle
Wiens, CEO of iFixit (San Luis Obispo, Calif.). Original
equipment manufacturers are fighting back, but Wiens noted a few recent court
and regulatory victories for the repair side. In addition to threatening
lawsuits against those who repair or modify devices or put repair manuals
online, OEMs are making repair more difficult through product design, he said.
For example, the iPhone X’s screen only works on its original device; the
screen from an end-of-life device can’t be reused as a replacement part.
OEMs’ concerns about third-party repairs and resale include
liability for unauthorized repairs or poor-quality replacement parts and the
absence of an electronics repair industry on par with the well-established auto
repair industry, said Walter Alcorn, vice president of environmental affairs and
industry sustainability at the Consumer Technology Association (Arlington,
Va.).
Manufacturers have worked to prevent the growth of such
businesses, Wiens said, such as by cutting off the supply of parts. The public
would benefit from competition in the electronics-repair market, Pearlman
added, because it could drive down costs. Alcorn cautioned, however, that if
right-to-repair laws become prevalent, “some manufacturers will change their
business model,” such as by leasing products instead of selling them.
Assessing lithium battery challenges and
opportunities. A session on lithium batteries addressed safety
hazards, proper handling, and the resale and recycling markets. Single-use
lithium primary batteries and rechargeable lithium-ion batteries are becoming
more prevalent, and higher energy densities will be coming, said Todd Ellis,
stewardship program director for Call2Recycle (Atlanta). He advised recyclers
to carefully vet downstream processors, designate proper storage areas, and train
employees in standard procedures for identifying and handling batteries.
Fire is the biggest hazard in lithium battery recovery and
recycling. Anyone who handles large volumes of these batteries “will have a
thermal event,” said Craig Boswell, president of HOBI International (Dallas).
These fires “burn really hot, [and] it’s easy to injure an employee.” Using a
putty knife or other metal tool to remove a glued-in battery can short-circuit
the battery or start a fire, the speakers warned. HOBI’s employees use a
plastic paddle to sweep a burning battery to the floor and let it burn out,
which happens very quickly, he said. Keep work areas free of combustible
materials such as paper, he added, to avoid a larger fire.
“Water is your friend” in extinguishing lithium battery fires,
said Todd Coy,
executive vice president of battery processor Kinsbursky Bros./Retriev
Technologies (Anaheim, Calif.). “If you don’t have sand available, use water,”
which has cooling properties that chemical fire suppressants do not.
Battery reuse is “where the big opportunity is,” Boswell said,
but testing is essential. “Just because it functions doesn’t mean it qualifies
for reuse.” HOBI only resells batteries with a state of health of 85 percent or
greater, he said. Follow safe practices when storing batteries in the testing
area, too, he added.
Kinsbursky’s facility in Brea, Calif., has provided collection,
remanufacturing, and fulfillment services for automakers’ electric and hybrid
vehicle batteries since 2015, Coy said. Its Trail, British Columbia, smelter
recycles 4 million pounds of lithium batteries a year, recovering lithium
carbonate, cobalt-containing products, and metals. It has created recovery and
disassembly guides, as well as cathode, anode, and recyclability reports, for
its OEM clients on more than 150 different batteries, he said.
Kinsbursky did not anticipate the dozen-plus EV battery
chemistries—with more to come—and the great variety in battery forms that would
enter the market, Coy said. Nor did it anticipate the growing interest in
reuse: EV batteries have a potential second life of about five to eight years,
he said, but damaged EV batteries introduce significant costs and risks to
recyclers. Markets for the recovered materials are growing, he added.
Robert
Kang, CEO of Blue Whale Materials (Washington, D.C.), also said
he expects dramatic growth in demand for battery materials and for closed-loop
recycling. His company wants to “establish a bridge between sources of material
and the South Korean lithium-ion battery market.” South Korean recovery
facilities’ operations—the mechanical processing of lithium batteries to a
“black sand” and hydrometallurgical recovery of metals—have a low environmental
impact and recover 95 percent of the metals, he said. Five companies, all based
in Northeast Asia, are 77 percent of the lithium battery market, Kang said, and
the manufacturing is concentrated in Asia as well, making the case for South
Korea as a destination for recovered batteries.
Quality and Markets Dominate Paper, Plastics Sessions
ISRI2018 offered strategies to help paper and plastic recyclers
affected by China’s import ban to improve the quality of their products and
find alternative markets.
Paper recyclers seek “non-China” solutions. Paper was among
the first scrap materials to feel the effects of China’s limiting scrap
imports, said panelists at the paper spotlight session. Paper recyclers have
had to rethink the way they do business, said moderator Leonard Zeid,
vice president of marketing for Midland Davis Corp. (Clayton, Mo.).
OCC prices in the United States have fallen by half since last
year, while prices for mixed paper have fallen about 90 percent in that same
time, said
Ketan Mamtora, vice president of BMO Capital Markets, and Greg Rudder,
lead editor for RISI. China’s ban on imports of “unsorted” recyclables means
almost no mixed paper from the United States, Europe, or Japan is being sold
into China. Instead, exporters are diverting mixed paper to other Asian ports,
the speakers noted.
Yet there are some areas to be optimistic about, such as a
growing “non-China” market for OCC, Mamtora said. India and Vietnam saw a
210-percent and 325-percent increase, respectively, in imports of OCC from the
United States in January and February 2018, and some in the industry have
called Vietnam “the new China,” he said.
Due to China’s new trade restrictions, RISI has made several
changes to its pricing index for China, the speakers said. It discontinued its
assessments of U.S. mixed-paper exports to China in March.
Plastics recyclers focus on demand, recyclability. One
priority for U.S. plastic recyclers and the Association of Plastic Recyclers
(Washington, D.C.) is encouraging brand owners and product designers to make
more of their plastic packaging recyclable, noted APR President Steve Alexander
at the plastics spotlight session. To facilitate that, the association has
introduced its APR Design Guide for Plastics Recyclability, which includes
protocols for testing a product’s sortability and recyclability.
Increasing demand for recovered plastics is another top priority
for the U.S. plastic recycling industry. “If you do that, you increase the
monetization of the product all the way back through the stream,” Alexander
said. APR’s Recycling Demand Champions program encourages manufacturers to
“expand the recycling paradigm” by using postconsumer recycled resin in
products such as pallets, dunnage crates, and shopping carts. “The potential
opportunities here are enormous,” he said. Another way to improve demand is to
reduce contamination in the recovered plastic stream, he said. APR is
addressing that point by offering customized training for brand owners whose
products are considered contaminants.
Additional demand potential also exists in traditional U.S.
plastic recycling markets, said Scott Saunders, general manager
of KW Plastics (Troy, Ala.), which recycles more than 500 million pounds a year
of HDPE and PP. The main “limiting factor for growth” for KW, in fact, is a
shortage of scrap. “We have capacity available,” he noted. “There is a ready,
willing, and able market for every pound that you can generate, and it’s at
good prices.” That’s why KW views China’s import bans on certain scrap plastics
as a “very large market opportunity,” he said.
Hefty has introduced its EnergyBag as one option for managing
hard-to-recycle plastics such as multiÂlayer, multimaterial flexible packaging.
First Star Recycling (Omaha, Neb) implemented the program in 2016, said project
manager Danielle
Easdale. Consumers buy the bright orange Hefty EnergyBags, fill
them with plastics that their local curbside recycling program doesn’t accept,
and put the sealed bags in their recycling bins. The curbside hauler delivers
the material to First Star, which pulls the Hefty bags out of the stream at the
beginning of the recovery process. The diverted plastics then are available for
pyrolysis facilities for conversion to diesel fuel, use as a fuel alternative
to coal in cement kilns, and use in products such as fence posts or wallboard.
“We’re constantly looking at ways we can use these materials and convert them
into valuable resources,” she said. So far, First Star’s program has collected
more than 23,500 bags, equivalent to 13 tons of hard-to-recycle plastics.
Designing for recycling and for incorporating recycled material.
Companies constantly aim to create better, lighter plastic packaging, but “we
have to make sure that the resin … has a home” at its end of life, said Sunil Bagaria,
co-founder and president of GDB International (New Brunswick, N.J.), at a
session on increasing recycled resins in packaging. Another goal is to ensure
that “everybody who is involved in that chain—from the collector to the
processor and then the manufacturer—is able to make some money doing it.” Since
the 1950s, almost 5.6 billion mt of plastics have gone to landfill or habitats
such as the ocean instead of being recycled. “We cannot continue to do this,”
Bagaria said.
One solution is to incorporate more recycled materials into
packaging. Tamsin
Ettefagh, vice president of sales and purchasing at Envision
Plastics (Reidsville, N.C.), pointed out the need to educate both manufacturers
and the public to create and demand packaging that incorporates recycled
materials. For example, instead of producing packaging for items in the grocery
store’s dairy aisle from a variety of resins, “why not use the same resin
across the board and make it easy for the consumer?” Ettefagh asked. Using just
one resin and then telling consumers “to recycle anything in the dairy aisle”
would simplify the recycling process. “They get that. They don’t get No. 1s,
No. 2s, HDPE, [and] polypropylene,” she said.
MRFs seek better quality. More types of packaging are
finding their way into recycling bins than ever before while MRFs are
scrambling to improve the quality of their bales. Speakers at the session on
MRF collection and quality issues discussed the frustrations of reducing
contamination while handling the ever-changing recycling stream. With China’s
new threshold of no more than 0.5-percent prohibitives for paper and most other
scrap, MRFs are working harder than ever to keep their material clean,
panelists said.
Bob
Cappadona, vice president, recycling, for Casella Waste Systems
(Rutland, Vt.), said MRFs are slowing down sorting lines or adding labor in
order to get better quality. Contamination causes MRFs to shut down multiple
times a day so workers can clear out clogged sorting screens, which eats into
productivity time, he said. “When you have 25-percent contamination coming in
the door, and we’re trying to reduce it to less than 2 percent—that’s very,
very difficult,” he said.
At the same time, customers “want to recycle easily, efficiently,
and don’t want to spend a lot of money on it,” said Susan Robinson, senior public
affairs director for Waste Management (Houston). That’s why they love
single-stream recycling, which lowers collection costs but also reduces
material quality. Part of the problem is that MRFs haven’t done a good enough
job of educating the public about what should and should not go in the blue
bin, she said. Better consumer education can help bring in better-quality
materials, she said.
The How2Recycle product label can help, said Nina Goodrich,
executive director of GreenBlue and director of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition
(Charlottesville, Va.). The labels, which brand owners voluntarily place on
their products, offer specific instructions for preparing and recycling various
packaging. The labels “motivate and help brands understand packaging
sustainability … and empower consumers to know how to recycle it,” she said.
Felix
Hottenstein, sales director at optical sorting equipment
manufacturer MSS (Nashville, Tenn.), pointed out that processors can reduce
contamination and produce higher quality bales by optimizing existing
equipment, such as by regularly performing preventive maintenance and running
at recommended capacity, and by adding new sortation equipment. Hand-held
analyzers, antiwrapping and self-cleaning disc screens, and optical sorting
equipment all can improve quality, Hottenstein said.
When it comes to recycling plastic, “we have a lot of work to
do,” said Bill
Schreiber, technical director of plastics at Lehigh Technologies
(Tucker, Ga.) in a session on improving quality through proper plastic resin identification.
For example, only 19.5 percent of PET, the most recycled resin, is recycled, he
pointed out.
One of the “rules” of plastics recycling is that most resins are
incompatible with each other, he said. Even if you can make the incompatibles
work together, there might not be a market for the product. The highest value
that recyclers can achieve is by keeping the different types of plastics
separate from each other and to separate them if they’re mixed, he said. He
described the strengths and weaknesses of a range of analyzers available for
identifying resins.
Tire Recyclers Look at Changing Markets
More scrap tires are being generated in the United States, but
finding end users for recovered rubber continues to challenge recyclers.
Rubber recyclers assess market opportunities. Scrap tire
generation rates have increased and markets have declined over the last couple
of years, according to John Sheerin, director of end-of-life tire programs at the
U.S. Tire Manufacturers Association. “There’s always a need for more and better
markets,” he said.
The recently released 2017 USTMA Scrap Tire
Management Report shows a roughly 3-percent increase in scrap tire
generation from 2015 to 2017, which he attributed to more driving. “The
tendency to drive more has overcome the tendency for tires to last longer, so
we’re seeing a higher generation rate,” he said.
Tire-derived fuel remains the largest market for scrap tires, but
it’s down about 10 percent from 2015 to 2017, Sheerin said.
The three principal industries using TDF—cement, pulp and paper,
and utilities—have fluctuated in dominance over the years, with cement
currently in the lead, said Terry Gray, president of TAG Resource Recovery (Houston).
In 2015, the United States had 39 cement plants in 13 states using
TDF, consuming 46 million tons of tires. The pulp and paper industry had 21
plants in 15 states using TDF, consuming 37.6 million tires, and
power-generating utilities had 25 facilities in eight states using TDF,
consuming 33.7 million tires. State regulations have had major impacts on its
use, such as the loss of the former Exeter tire-to-energy facility in Sterling,
Conn., which used 10 million tires a year, he said. TDF use is likely to
decrease in biomass energy facilities and coal-fired power plants—and it’s
being “clobbered” where there are incentives to use solar and wind power, Gray
said. But TDF for power generation in municipal solid waste power plants could
increase if the capacity is available, he said.
The synthetic turf infill market fell about 20 percent during
that time, which Sheerin attributed largely to concerns about the material’s
health and environmental impact. “As more and more studies confirm no impact to
human health and the environment … we anticipate the sports turf market coming
back,” Sheerin said. “We hear very good things for 2018.”
Sheerin also said he anticipates an increase in scrap tires being
used in civil engineering, such as incorporating the rubber into asphalt.
Speakers at a session focused on emerging opportunities for crumb rubber
manufacturers concurred. Rubber-modified asphalt is less sensitive to
temperature, reduces traffic noise, and reduces surface rutting, said Barry Takallou,
president and CEO of CRM Co. (Newport Beach, Calif.). (See “Paving the Way for
Asphalt Rubber” on page 51 of this issue.)
Art
Dodge, CEO of Ecore International (Lancaster, Pa.), touted the
benefits of using crumb rubber as a flooring underlay to absorb shock and
sound. Hospitals and nursing homes can benefit from the shock-absorbing material
to cushion patient falls; the rubber underlay also makes the rooms quieter,
which can speed patient recovery, he said. Hotels can benefit from the sound
absorption as well, he said.
Tom
Redd, CEO of Pyrolyx USA (Terre Haute, Ind.), explained that pyrolysis
can separate the valuable carbon black from tires’ metal and rubber. Although
recovered carbon black might be a completely unknown commodity to most
recyclers, Redd suggested thinking of it as a commodity, “the same way you
think of something like recycled pulp or aluminum or steel.”
Culture, Technology Are Among Safety and Operations
Concerns
Safety remains a priority for the scrap recycling industry, and
safety professionals offered advice for making safety an integral part of scrap
facility operations.
Safe operations require a safety culture. ReMA Vice
President of Safety Terry Cirone pointed out that a safety culture is more than
having a safety program, it’s a “part of your overall business culture—it’s a
measurement of how well things are done in your business.” In a facility with a
good safety culture, a lower-level employee should feel free to call out
longtime workers who don’t have their PPE on, for example. “If you can trust
your employees to take care of each other, you have a safety culture … [you
can] build on,” she said.
Collecting and analyzing data from your operations is critical to
understanding workers’ behavior and not just their attitudes about safety.
Track near misses, Cirone said, and share them. “A near miss is a lagging
indicator; it’s luck,” she said. “But it’s a prime piece of data you can learn
from. Identify trends, and let employees know what to do to prevent [near-miss
incidents from] happening again.” Also let workers know when you’ve fixed a
problem based on their input, she added. “Then they’ll keep coming to you with
problems,” she said. “That’s a good thing.”
Tony
Smith, ISRI’s director of safety outreach, advised recyclers to
think beyond the safety culture to their overall business culture. “Everyone in
the company is equal in terms of safety compliance,” he said. Among his
recommendations were to have workers in the field conduct safety “toolbox
talks” and “tailgate meetings,” and to put them to work on safety committees
rather than just have complaint sessions. Also, get workers into the habit,
before they start working, of conducting two-minute hazard-assessment drills
where they look around for “what can hurt me? What can go wrong?”
MRFs tackle lithium-ion battery fires. More items than ever
have lithium batteries: digital cameras, cellphones, toys, and even power
tools. When consumers throw these devices away, they can end up at MRFs, where
the batteries can cause fires when crushed or bent.
Lithium batteries—both rechargeable lithium-ion batteries and
smaller, one-time-use lithium primary batteries—are beginning to replace
nickel-cadmium batteries on store shelves, said Todd Ellis, director of
stewardship programs for Call2Recycle (Atlanta), at a session on MRFs’ efforts
to keep these hazards “out of the bin.” Ellis recommends that MRFs work with
state or provincial officials, recycling organizations such as ISRI, and
Call2Recycle to spread the word that batteries don’t belong in the recycling
bin.
Some batteries inevitably will end up at a MRF, so train employees
to spot them and items that usually contain them, such as cellphones. Pull such
items off the line and set them aside until you can “find a recycler to partner
with” to pick them up. MRFs can participate in Call2Recycle’s program, which
provides collection boxes to safely store batteries for proper pickup and
disposal, but some use buckets or metal drums as a collection vessel to keep
the batteries away from flammable materials. Be sure to separate the batteries
in plastic zip bags, he warned, or securely tape the positive and negative
terminals. Otherwise, the terminals could rub against other batteries, causing
a spark that can ignite the whole bin. “Clear packing tape is good—Scotch tape
just doesn’t hold,” Ellis said. If a battery does ignite, the fire burns very
hot, he noted, and requires “lots and lots of water” to put out.
Technology aids worker safety, equipment performance.
Recyclers can leverage numerous technology tools to enhance worker safety and
improve the maintenance and performance of their mobile equipment.
Caterpillar (Peoria, Ill.) has introduced two products to
minimize fatigue-related risks, said Mark Dowsett, a Cat account
manager in Portland, Ore. The Smartband is a wrist-worn predictive tool that
monitors the quantity and quality of workers’ sleep to ensure they are fit for
duty. The Driver Safety System is a dashboard camera that monitors the driver’s
face for signs of nodding off. Customers who use the Smartband and Driver
Safety System have seen an 80-percent reduction in fatigue-related events,
Dowsett said. Cat also has a Detect for Personnel system that uses RFID chips
in safety gear such as reflective vests and hard hats that mobile equipment can
detect. Upon detection, the system sounds an alert to reduce the chance of the
equipment injuring workers on the ground.
Fleet management camera technology can monitor activities inside
and outside the truck to improve driver performance and address accidents and
other issues, noted Garry Mosier, vice president of national accounts for 3rd
Eye (Katy, Texas). The cameras record high-definition video continuously. If
the system detects a driver violation—such as running a stop sign—or if the
truck exceeds a specific G-force level, the camera records the event and
uploads it to 3rd Eye’s review center in Texas, which scores the incident and
uploads the footage to the customer’s portal.
Telematics can help recyclers monitor the operating health of
their equipment, conduct remote diagnostics, and use the collected data to
improve operator and machine performance, said Dave Adams, a manager at Volvo
Construction Equipment (Shippensburg, Pa.). Having different telematics systems
in fleets of mixed equipment can present problems, however, and the
“information overload” from the systems can be “a huge time and resource
constraint,” he added. Volvo CE’s ActiveCare Direct program has helped
customers lower their fuel use 10 to 15 percent, reduced their machine idle
time 7 percent, and increased machine use 5 to 10 percent, he said.
Certification programs keep pace with change. “Every
[recycling] standard known to man has undergone a revision in the last three
years,” said Darrell
Kendall, executive director of the Global Recycling Standards
Organization, which manages the Recycling Industry Operating Standard™.
As the recycling industry changes, so must the industry standards,
certification criteria, and auditing processes change to reflect conditions
recyclers are dealing with at their facilities. He pointed out that the changes
RIOS has adopted focus more on quality to meet certain requirements suppliers
and consumers seek in their vendor selections. Another addition is a
requirement for incident investigations: Near-miss reports now must trigger
root-cause investigations, he said. The revised standard also puts stronger
requirements on senior management to be involved in the program. The revised RIOS
Implementation Guide for RIOS members contains templates,
supplemental worksheets, policies, and procedures, all written clearly for
recyclers, not for “MIT rocket scientists,” he said.
The Responsible Recycling standard also is undergoing an upgrade,
according to Corey
Dehmey, R2 director at Sustainable Electronics Recycling
International (Hastings, Minn.). The group’s technical advisory committee revises
the standard on a five-year cycle to keep up with changes in the marketplace,
but the committee determined that the standard now needs a major restructuring
to meet the changing needs of the 768 facilities in 32 countries that have been
certified to date. The standard previously focused on collecting and processing
end-of-life equipment, but now manufacturers also want to certify their repair
facilities, he said. The committee is considering proposed changes and hopes to
have a draft of the revised standard by the end of the year, he said.
Tips and Tools for Running a Successful Business
Recycling businesses can benefit from best management practices
from experienced scrap professionals and leaders in other industries,
participants learned in varied business-management sessions.
Nonferrous traders offer advice for the novice. “No price,
deal, or sale matters when you’re selling scrap metal if you do not get paid,”
warned Eric
Zwilsky, vice president of Potomac Metals (Sterling, Va.), who
shared trading tips that have helped his company. “Bankruptcies happen,” he
said, and eventually every business will encounter a situation where a business
can’t pay its customers. He advised getting insurance on receivables when
selling scrap on terms or getting payment in advance—especially when exporting
material—and insuring the trucks going out. Zwilsky also offered advice on when
to lock in prices and when to ship. “Try to deal back to back,” he said,
ensuring each load you buy has someone ready to buy from you. And the time to
ship is “Now! If your payment is secure … and pricing is confirmed, there’s no
reason to hold the material back.”
Hedging is another valuable strategy for scrap traders, according
to Randy
Goodman, executive vice president of Greenland (America)
(Roswell, Ga.). You don’t need to have a commodities brokerage account to
hedge, he said; you can do it yourself on a small scale. For example, if you
have a load of scrap you know you’re going to generate soon, you can sell it
unpriced but locked to a price spread or differential. “Hedging is reducing
risk,” he stressed. “That’s the only thing it should be used for. It should
never be used as a tool to make money.”
Traders should visit processors to see the quality of the
material they’re buying and to make sure it’s what processors say they’re
making, advised Stephen Moss, vice president of Stanton A. Moss Inc. (Bryn
Mawr, Pa.). “The worst thing you can have in this business is rejections,” he
said. “Rejections don’t make anybody any money. All they do is cost you money
and time and your reputation.”
Learning the range of metals identification techniques.
It’s worth knowing the “classical” methods of identifying metals, though those
techniques are disappearing as hand-held metal analyzers have gotten faster,
said Jim
Pasmore, president of Analytical Sales/Training (Bend, Ore.).
No-tech ID methods include form factor, object recognition, color,
weight/volume/density, and magnetic response; low-tech approaches include spark
testing, chemical spot testing, and thermoelectric resistance testing.
Combining ID methods also can be useful, he said.
Pasmore described the characteristics and benefits of several
metal-sorting technologies available to scrap recyclers. On-site spectroscopy
works well for new and entry-level sorters, he said, and many consumers require
that capability. Costs of the equipment are dropping, and the investment in
that technology can pay for itself in just months, he said. X-ray fluorescence
is a mature technology, and laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy is becoming
mature. These technologies can replace some capabilities of optical emission
spectrometer instruments, with the exception of identifying carbon and tramp
elements, he said. LIBS works better than XRF for light elements, such as
aluminum and magnesium, but alloys are more complicated, he noted. He also
warned that, in general, an XRF instrument is less sturdy—so don’t drop it.
One of the challenges of metal identification is that there are
more than 100 grades of alloys out there, but perhaps only 30 percent are pure
metals or high alloys you can identify with XRF, LIBS, or OES, Pasmore said. He
advised using best practices for sample preparation and length of exposure to
the instruments.
Electronic payment systems offer benefits and challenges.
In an era of rapid electronic transactions, “sometimes you need to slow down”
because mistakes can happen fast, too, said Kevin Lamar, chief financial
officer of Dynamic Metal Services (Bedford Heights, Ohio). Your company’s
finance department needs technology to increase efficiency, but slowing down
the transaction approval process can help avoid mistakes. Work with your
bankers as experts and consultants, Lamar advised, because they have fraud
prevention tools, for instance, and they know the best processes available.
Different transaction systems are appropriate for payment flows
between different points in a scrap recycler’s value chain from supplier to
customer, noted Joe Casali, senior vice president, operations and IT, of
the New England Automated Clearing House Association. For instance, peddlers
often want to be paid in cash, but you could pay a commercial supplier using an
automated clearing house, with invoices and checks traveling electronically.
Businesses need accounting systems that can integrate the variety of payment
and settlement channels, he said, including cash, checks and ACH networks,
credit/debit/prepaid cards, electronic-fund transfer payments, and wire
transfer networks.
One advantage ACH transactions have over card and wire
transactions is that you can reverse them if you’ve made a mistake, pointed out
Stephanie
Prebish, a senior director of the National Automated Clearing
House Association. Card and wire transactions are immediate, but they cost more
and are irreversible. She also observed that new entrants to the “payments
ecosystem,” such as PayPal, Amazon.com, Apple Pay, and Zell, bring new risks.
Such technologies meant to facilitate transactions also require “changing
consumer behavior, and that’s not an easy thing to do,” she said.
Other challenges include keeping up with new laws covering check
processing and data privacy, as well as potential security and fraud problems,
Casali said. “Fraudsters are super creative,” he said. “It’s good to be a fast
follower” as technology changes, but businesses should understand their needs
and those of their customers.
Proactive measures can cut insurance costs.
“Don’t Get Eaten Alive” addressed cost-containment strategies for human
resources. To keep down your worker’s comp insurance costs, build a culture of
safety, said Steve
Fuoco and Jason Maslin of insurance and risk-management firm Bradley
& Parker (Melville, N.Y.). For example, have a safety committee meet
regularly to set rules and look for the root causes of near misses and
accidents. “Find out the why, not the who—don’t place blame,” said Maslin, an
insurance counselor for the firm.
Noting the prevalence of sexual-harassment claims in the past few
years, Maslin recommended making that training part of the safety program.
Airborne-hazard-related claims will soon be common, predicted Fuoco, senior
vice president. Conduct baseline tests of employees’ lung function—and their
hearing and vision—when you hire them, he said, so you can measure later claims
against that standard.
If you’ve got a good safety record, a captive insurance program
or a large-deductible program can save you money, Fuoco said. Also ask
insurance providers about potential cost-cutting changes to variables that can
affect your rate, such as the low-cost multiplier, premium discounts, scheduled
credits, and discounts based on your experience modification.
Human-resource software systems can manage payroll, health
insurance, retirement plans, performance reviews, and more, cutting the time
and money you spend on administering them, said Joe Applebaum, founder of
Potomac Cos. (Rockville, Md.). He reviewed large and small strategies for
reducing health-insurance costs, from switching to a high-deductible insurance
plan to teaching employees how to reduce prescription drug costs. Employee
benefits such as retirement plans, life and disability insurance, and wellness
plans can help with retention, he pointed out.
Hiring, inspiring, and retaining talented workers. “Human
capital is severely lacking in all businesses these days,” said Tannen Ellis-Graham,
co-founder of CareerKarma360 (Sandy, Utah), at the session on locating and
recruiting top talent. Sammy Holaschutz, a trader for W Silver Recycling (El Paso,
Texas), suggested one way to find employees is to mine prospects from other
industries and professions, then train them. Holaschutz was a tax accountant
whom W Silver recruited and trained to work as a nonferrous trader. “We’re
looking for people who are completely different, but who have the right skill sets,”
he said. “We do not shy away from diverse candidates. We’re a global industry,
so we need to take a global, diverse approach.”
Recycling companies must compete for talent by making it easy for
prospects to find them online and through social media and then by presenting a
compelling employer brand, Ellis-Graham said. The candidate experience starts
from the moment prospects find your company to the point you either accept or
reject them. It’s particularly important to make your application process easy
and tech savvy, she added. Candidates—especially millennials—expect to be able
to apply to your job on the phone, and they expect you to interact with them
promptly, or they’ll move on. “Speed is the new currency,” she said.
Employers in scrap recycling are engaged in a “war for talent,”
competing to retain employees in a tight market, according to Kimberly Jones,
CEO of talent-acquisition firm Kelton Legend. Employees might be actively or
passively job hunting and could be poached by competitors, but having a talent
strategy can help you keep the talent you already have, Jones said.
Company culture is a major factor that keeps or pushes away
employees. Leaders create a positive culture by engaging with employees and
encouraging a work–life balance—qualities especially important to millennials,
now the largest generation in the workforce. But millennials aren’t the only
employees who thrive from engagement; workplaces benefit when managers get to
know the various generations, understand generational differences in the
workforce, and identify generational gaps, according to Gary Hensley,
Southern region vice president of EMR (USA Holdings) (Bellmawr, N.J.). “If we
don’t understand their needs, we can’t effectively manage,” he said. Empowered
employees are more likely to stay with a company. Managers can foster
empowerment by assigning meaningful projects, updating employees on company
performance—even negative performance—and regularly conducting reviews in which
leaders explain how employees can add value.
“People who have been given a plan and know what’s expected of
them are more likely to hit performance goals,” Jones said.
A positive company culture is one where leaders make
communicating with employees a priority, according to panelists at a session on
ways leaders can support new ideas and innovation. It also requires taking
risks and allowing employees to do so as well, they said.
“Challenge everything, and give everybody the right to challenge
everything,” said Bruce Shapiro, president and CEO of Shapiro Metals (St.
Louis). “The more we challenge, the more we learn and the better we get.”
“Lead by example,” advised Mark Lasky, CEO of Sadoff Iron
& Metal Co. (Fond du Lac, Wis.). “Be accessible,” and create an environment
where employees feel comfortable and empowered to have tough conversations. “A
‘culture of fear’ leads to silence or violence,” he said.
Eliminating one-way, top-down communication and encouraging
two-way communication between leaders and employees “has helped us to seek
other people’s input” and implement new ideas, said Brandi Harleaux, chief
operating officer of South Post Oak Recycling Center (Houston).
Workplaces that discriminate on the basis of factors such as age,
race, sexual orientation, and gender will hurt workers and possibly cost their
company thousands of dollars, according to Joshua Treece and Michael Gardner,
principals of law firm Woods Rogers at a session on workforce compliance
issues. They gave many real-world examples of bungled workplace compliance
issues and how managers and companies faced consequences for violating Title
VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination
based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.
The bottom line, Treece and Gardner said, is that workplaces must
have written policies in place that expressly forbid these types of
discrimination, and they must follow them. Having written policies not only
sets clear workplace behavior expectations but also is “critical in order to
defend yourself in court,” Gardner said.
Recyclers address intergenerational matters. Family
businesses abound in the scrap recycling industry, and transferring ownership
to subsequent generations is a significant concern, according to speakers at a
session on “keeping it in the family.” Being born into or marrying into a
business “creates a lot of complexities” that aren’t necessarily present when
consciously choosing business partners outside the family, said Dana Telford,
principal consultant of the Family Business Consulting Group. For example,
conflicts between family members at work can spill over to home life.
The prospect of keeping a business within the family when one or
more of the owners wishes to retire or leave the business also can create
conflicts, Telford said. In some cases, no family members are interested in
taking over the business, which can cause stress on the older generation. In
other instances, too many people are interested, creating stress among the
younger generation. Older generations also feel stress about letting go of the
business and about the subsequent generation’s capabilities.
Older generations should consider a business valuation to
determine a fair sale price, said Vince Pappalardo, managing
director for the metals and metals processing practice at Chicago-based
investment banker Brown Gibbons Lang & Co. He also recommended doing a
thorough assessment of whether selling to someone outside the family ultimately
would be better for the business. “If you sell it to somebody who doesn’t want
it, that’s going to be worse for everybody in the long run,” he said. Many
forms of business sales exist, he added, noting that owners do not have to sell
off an entire business all at once.
Whether members of the same family or not, industry veterans and
young recyclers can learn from each other, said panelists at the “Old School
Meets New School” session.
Younger recyclers have fresh ideas on how to make businesses
thrive, while the older generation has years of experience and wisdom to share,
said the panel, comprising two members of ISRI’s Century Club, for those with
100 years of combined age and experience, and two of ISRI’s Young Executives
group.
Dan
Garvin, president of Colorado Iron and Metal (Fort Collins,
Colo.) and a Young Executives member, said technology makes business more
efficient, but he appreciates the “lost art” of testing metals using acid or
spark tests, for example. Yet Barry Hunter, president of Hunter Alloys (Boca Raton, Fla.)
and Century Club co-chair, said new technology isn’t everything—sometimes years
of know-how are better.
Older generations take great pride in hard work, and younger
generations have built on that by prioritizing workplace initiatives where
employees feel appreciated, said South Post Oak Recycling Center’s Brandi
Harleaux. At South Post Oak, “the mantra in our yard has shifted from ‘a place
to work hard’ to ‘a fun place to work hard,’” she said.
Though the old and new schools may not see eye to eye on
everything, the four panelists agreed that safety should be the No. 1 priority
in every yard. “Our industry does not have a good safety record,” said Century
Club member Don
Lewon, CEO of Utah Metal Works (Salt Lake City), although he believes
safety has improved. For example, he noted that when he began in the business,
“the forklift didn’t have a seat belt … but now the guys are wearing them all
the time.” Garvin said the industry has improved its focus on safety, but it
can do a better job of making safety a habit instead of an obligation.
Kent Kiser, Rachel H. Pollack, Katie
Pyzyk, Megan Quinn, and Cynthia G. Wagner
(Sidebar Content)
Individuals, Companies
Honored With 2017 Vehicle Safety Awards
Joseph Cody
of Sims Metal Management (Sacramento, Calif.) received ISRI’s Safe Driver of
the Year Award recognizing his 44 years of safe driving. (See ScrapTV’s
interview with Cody at youtu.be/MfskePsz95w.) Armando
Ojeda, a diesel mechanic at Rocky Mountain Recycling (Commerce City,
Colo.), earned the Golden Wrench Award for outstanding achievement in vehicle
maintenance. ReMA recognized Cody and Ojeda April 18 during the Spotlight on
Transportation.
The association also recognized the following
companies for their fleet safety programs. The Best Fleet Award recognizes
companies with the lowest vehicle accident rate and the lowest U.S. Department
of Transportation recordable rate in the previous year. The Pacesetter Award
uses the same criteria but covers a three-year period, in this case Jan. 1,
2015–Dec. 31, 2017.
Best Fleet
Award
Small Class (300,000–500,000
miles): Shine Bros. Corp. (Spencer, Iowa), Berman Bros. (Jacksonville, Fla.),
General Metals of Tacoma (Schnitzer Steel Industries) (Tacoma, Wash.)
Intermediate Class (500,001–1 million miles): United Scrap Metal
(Cicero, Ill.), Rochester Iron and Metal (Rochester, Ind.), TJN Enterprises
(Spencer, Iowa)
Medium Class (1,000,001–5
million miles): Metal Exchange Corp. (St. Louis), Prolerized New England Co.
(Schnitzer Steel Industries) (Warwick, R.I.), LP Transport (LP PADNOS)
(Holland, Mich.)
Large Class (more than 5
million miles): OmniSource Transport (Fort Wayne, Ind.)
Pacesetter
Award
Small Class (300,000–500,000 miles): General Metals of Tacoma (Schnitzer
Steel Industries)
Intermediate Class (500,001–1 million miles): Consolidated Scrap
Resources (York, Pa.)
Medium Class (1,000,001–5 million miles): Prolerized New England Co.
(Schnitzer Steel Industries)
Large Class (more than 5 million miles): OmniSource Transport
ISRI Hosts Launch of MusicRecycle
MusicRecycle,
a new campaign using music to promote public education about recycling, brought
members of the recycling and entertainment industries together at a lively
reception during ISRI2018. Music can
reach billions of people in ways no other medium can, said Gemini Corp.
(Antwerp, Belgium) Chairman Surendra Borad Patawari, whose family is supporting
the initiative with ReMA and the Berklee College of Music. His daughter—singer,
songwriter, producer, and Berklee graduate Kanika Patawari (above
left)—reminded attendees of the power of music personified by such artists as
Joan Baez, George Harrison, and Ravi Shankar.
“So, what can music do for recycling?” Kanika asked.
It can help get youth interested, she said. “Make it uncool not to recycle.”
Recycling has a “strong industry, and [with the] association’s finesse we can
gather star power,” she said. She asked attendees to tap their contacts in the
music and recycling industries, noting that ISRI’s convention in Los Angeles
next year is an opportunity to promote the MusicRecycle project.
Veteran producer and songwriter Peter
Bunetta (above right) advocated using music videos to help educate young
people worldwide about recycling. “Kids remember the videos,” which bring
awareness about choices, he said. He also suggested the recycling industry
could brand its own music festival. Contact Kanika Patawari at
musicrecycleproject@gmail.