On Wednesday, November 18, ISRI teamed up with Keep America Beautiful to host a Congressional Recycling Caucus briefing focusing on the “State of Recycling.” Both House Caucus co-chairmen (John Shimkus and Frank Pallone) were there to open the briefing and describe the importance of recycling for our economy and our environment.
In addition to the many Congressional staffers who attended, the proceeding was webcast with over 7,500 live viewers.
ISRI’s presentation focused on the size of the industry as well as the integral relationship between recycling and manufacturing. Issues such as exports and commodity prices were also highlighted especially with the incredible and long term downturn in commodity prices across the board. ReMA did explain that while markets are down, the business cycle will recover. In the meantime, the industry continues to process over 130 million metric tons of materials ranging from ferrous and non-ferrous metals, paper, plastic, textiles, and rubber used in a variety of applications such as roads and athletic fields.
In addition, the Jason Learning educational curriculum was presented as a way to educate and train the next generation of recyclers by focusing on science, technology, and math in the recycling operations. With ReMA primarily focused on industrial and commercial recycling, Keep America Beautiful concentrated on municipal and household recycling and showcased recent videos showing how even small products such as plastic bottles lead to a bigger environmental impact.
These types of briefings enable ReMA to highlight the benefits of the scrap recycling industry to Congress in an educational type format. It helps make lawmakers aware of the industry and how it impacts the local economy in their Congressional districts and states including jobs, tax revenue, and other economic measures. In many cases, lawmakers are unaware of these benefits. For more information about the briefing, contact Billy Johnson.