September/October 2011
An Open-Door Policy
By inviting schoolchildren and other community members to tour their processing facilities, scrap companies hope to build a lifetime love of recycling.
By Jim Fowler
Great Lakes Recycling Solutions (New Boston, Mich.) believes that educating the public about recycling improves its standing in the community—and its bottom line. That’s why, when the company built a new $12 million, highly automated single-stream processing system in Huron Township, Mich., $500,000 of the budget went to creating an education center. When the center opened in January 2009, about 50 people came to tour the facility each month. Today the company hosts between 300 and 400 individuals a month, teaching them about recycling and how the scrap industry recovers and processes a host of materials for reuse.
A half-million dollars is a considerable investment, but the company considers that money well spent. Education and outreach can build and strengthen relationships with neighbors, public officials, and others in the community. But these companies are looking at the bigger picture as well. By investing in education and outreach—especially to children—they believe they’re building their long-term supply of scrap.
“Whatever kids do is of interest to their parents, and if we can spark an interest in recycling, the kids will take that enthusiasm home,” says Holly Ramsey, customer relations manager of Van Gundy’s AMPCO (Grand Junction, Colo.). “I believe that educating our children and getting them here for tours—letting them see the process and getting them excited about it—boosts the industry as a whole, for all commodities to be recycled.” As John Hawthorne, Great Lakes Recycling’s chief operating officer, puts it, “If we want people to recycle, and to recycle more, we’ve got to be a part of the advocacy group that makes it happen. We just can’t rely on the communities, which we all know are strapped for money now, to push recycling. We have to be an active participant.”
The company’s philosophy about recycling, he says, is that “a rising tide lifts all boats, so the more we can educate and teach people about recycling, the more they will recycle. Obviously it’s a direct benefit to our company and our recycling efforts, [but] we also believe we’re helping to raise the recycling rate in the entire state.”
Single-Stream Showcase
For Great Lakes Recycling, the demand for tours at its original single-stream facility factored into its decision to design its new plant to accommodate them, Hawthorne says. “From a safety point of view, we didn’t feel comfortable” offering tours at the older facility, he says, “so when we designed the new facility, we planned for a world-class single-stream system that would offer public tours. We knew we could accomplish [that] by planning in advance.” In addition to its tours for elementary school groups, the company hosts a variety of senior-citizen groups, advocacy organizations such as the Sierra Club, and Scout troops. About 40 people can participate in each tour, and the tours are accessible to the disabled.
The plant’s front office has a spacious lobby complete with posters and a video on recycling that plays on a continuous loop, describing for visitors what they’re about to see. An elevator takes them to the mezzanine level, where another lobby contains additional recycling displays and information about the company. From a 200-foot-long, glass-enclosed walkway, visitors can see the tipping floor—which measures 200 feet by 300 feet, with a 20-foot ceiling—where collection trucks dump the commingled recyclables at a rate of 40 to 50 trucks a day. Along the hallway is a large display of the various types of materials the company recycles at this facility.
After the hallway portion of the tour, which Hawthorne says takes about 10 minutes, the group goes to the education center, a 2,000-square-foot room with glass walls on two sides that give a view of the recycling center floor. The company tailors its presentation to the group it’s hosting, Hawthorne says. “We have different presentations for various adult groups, for first and second graders, and for middle school students.” Some of the presentations are more interactive than others, he says. For example, “a 5-year-old likes to hold a plastic milk jug and talk about it a little bit.”
Overhead walkways lead from the education center to above the processing floor, bringing visitors within about 6 feet of the processing equipment. “It’s all designed so our guests can safely see what we do and how we do it without interfering with our employees,” Hawthorne says. All told, the tour lasts about an hour. With the high level of interest in tours, GLR has a part-time employee working 25 hours a week to schedule and lead them. The tour leader worked in the public sector, and she “was involved in education for the Department of Public Works and in recycling advocacy” for one of the local communities, Hawthorne says.
The feedback the company receives on the tours is “phenomenally positive,” he says. “People are just astounded by single-stream processing—the technology, the eddy-current [separator], the optical sort, and the cleanliness of the facility. Kids find the movement of the materials (some 85,000 tons annually) through the plant the most fascinating,” he adds. “The paper tumbling over the discs, the magnet picking up steel cans, the optical sort, where they see the plastic being sorted invisibly, jumping up in the air—they find it magical. I’ve heard it described as ‘Mary Poppins-like,’ with objects just floating in the air. When we empty the bunkers, and you see milk jugs or a bunker full of laundry detergent jugs pouring out onto the conveyor belt—the different colors, shapes, and sizes—[visitors] see ordinary things in their lives being reused,” he says.
The company also has given tours to “hundreds” of city and community leaders, which Hawthorne believes has been a factor in the “tremendous growth” of single-stream recycling in Michigan over the last six to eight years. “When they see our plant in operation and realize that the material is actually being recycled, that jobs are being created, and that a private-public partnership can work, we’re able to demonstrate what a great concept recycling is,” he says. “We are convinced that our tours are encouraging more communities to recycle and thus [resulting in] more recycling.”
In addition to showing these community leaders “what single-stream systems and recycling are all about,” the company answers their questions and helps them consider all the recycling possibilities. As an example, Hawthorne cites the question of whether a community should use a small or large recycling container. “Our experience [is] that when the larger can is used, there is a 30- to 40-percent increase in the recycling rate overnight,” he says. “Obviously, the folks in the community can calculate the benefits in landfill savings” from the additional recycling. “We can’t make those decisions for them, but we can provide the best information we have so they can make the best decisions for their communities.”
Scrap Ambassadors
Improved community relations was the goal of Van Gundy’s AMPCO when it started offering tours four years ago. For years the company had a contentious relationship with city officials over various property issues. The last straw was the city’s plan to construct a massive highway interchange right through the scrapyard, which forced the company to move. That move required a zoning change for the new property, which turned into an uphill battle, says Randy Van Gundy, the company’s vice president. “Basically, Grand Junction wanted us out of sight and out of mind.” The company eventually received the zoning change it needed and “built an immaculate facility,” Van Gundy says. “By doing that, we changed our image and what people thought of us.” To ensure the community continues to appreciate the company and the services it provides, Van Gundy’s constructed an education center at its new facility where it can host tours.
Like Great Lakes Recycling, Van Gundy’s AMPCO’s primary audience is schoolchildren. “When we pitched this [tour idea] to the Mesa County [Colo.] school district, we weren’t sure how they would react,” says Ramsey, who runs the tour program, which occupies about 20 percent to 30 percent of her time. District leaders “met with some of their teachers, who, along with some of the school board directors, came here and experienced the tour we planned for their students. It took off from there.” The first year the company hosted 97 students; in 2010 it hosted 683. The tours’ popularity has “just exploded over the past four years, and it will continue to grow,” she says. “The school district is pleased with the program.”
The tour, which takes two to two-and-a-half hours, begins in the company’s education center, a 25-by-65-foot room with classroom-style seating, a television, and a projector. The walls hold posters of processing equipment and a 14-by-5-foot board displaying nonferrous items kids might recognize, such as aluminum cans, a faucet, and an aluminum baseball bat. Ferrous items are on a table in front of the board. Ramsey begins the tour by asking the students, “How many of you recycle?” A few students will raise their hands, she says. Next she plays What’s One Can?, a DVD produced by Novelis (Atlanta) and distributed by Evermore Recycling (Nashville, Tenn.), its joint venture with Alcoa (New York). The video traces the life of an aluminum can from a store shelf back to a store shelf, she says.
After the video, Ramsey describes what happens to different materials, especially metals, when they are recycled or not recycled. “We begin with a banana peel, which takes about three weeks to break down in its natural environment, compared with an aluminum or steel can, which can take anywhere from 100 to 500 years,” she says. “Then we discuss how different materials break down in a landfill versus how they are processed in the recycling world.” The discussion moves from how to what to recycle—“things at their school and at home that they can recycle rather than throw away.” The discussion can take about an hour. “That includes tons of questions,” she adds.
The Van Gundy’s visitors then go into the scrapyard and interact with the workers. When the visitors are children, the company requires one adult chaperone for each 10 children. Ramsey says she meets with the adults prior to each tour so they know what to expect and to ensure they keep the kids in order. Each visitor must wear a hard hat, safety glasses, a reflective vest, and ear protection. Ramsey and other workers communicate via two-way radios to control traffic and facilitate the group’s safe movement around the yard.
Scrapyard employees prepare for the visitors in advance, Ramsey says. “The guys set up their areas with the material they want to process with their machines. We’ll have cans to be baled so they can be seen coming out of the baler. Some iron will be set aside for the shear. There’ll be a car to bale.
“You can tell which guys are really into the performance part of it,” she adds. “They get loads of cheers and applause. The kids find the machines amazing in the way they process the material, and the guys take advantage of the strength and power of the equipment to wow the kids.” The company halts all other processing activity during the tour for safety reasons and to keep visitors focused on the demonstration at hand.
The scrapyard tour takes from one hour to 90 minutes, “depending on what the guys have planned for them,” she says. The employees enjoy the tours as well, she adds. “Not only do they enjoy the image the tours provide us in the community, but they really interact with the kids to provide them with the sense that they are here to experience something like they have never seen before.”
After the tour, it’s back to the classroom so visitors can talk about what they’ve seen and ask “a million more questions,” Ramsey says. Younger visitors leave with a goodie bag that typically contains pencils, magnets, a cup cozy, and coloring books (the latter also produced by Novelis). She estimates the company spends $1,000 to $1,500 each year on the giveaways. The tour ends with one more question from Ramsey: “How many of you are going to recycle?” Every hand in the room goes up, she says.
After the success the company has had hosting schoolchildren in grades 1 through 12, Ramsey tried hosting a group of 45 4- and 5-year-olds last year, with two adult chaperones for each 10 children. “It was quite a procedure, [but] they had a blast,” she says. “They were astounded—in awe—being out there with all of that big equipment. They had a million more questions than any group I’ve ever done.” She would love to have more tour groups of children in that age range, she adds. “They do require a bit more attention, [but] I enjoy them the most. … The excitement and curiosity make my job so easy, because they are the ones who are going to leave here in nonstop chatter, and that’s what we are trying to achieve. We want to create an experience that kids and grown-ups alike are going to talk about.”
Ramsey takes photos of each group, which she places on a wall in the education center along with laminated letters and pictures students have written and drawn for her. She also takes photos of the students touring the yard, which she makes into a CD the students can take back to their classroom. “It’s been a really positive program,” Van Gundy says. “There’s been a great response from teachers, who have been amazed at what they’ve seen—what we do, how well [the tour] was organized, and what a great tour it was.”
The company welcomes adult visitors to its facility as well—it offers tours to any group of 20 to 50 people, and individuals who want to see the operation can join scheduled group tours when space allows. “We have a clean and organized facility that we’re proud to have people see,” Van Gundy says. “We invite everyone, including state and local government officials. We’re just trying to change the image of the scrapyard.” Today “the education center is an important part of the company,” Ramsey says. “It has become our way of giving back to the community, and it’s important to us to maintain it and make sure that everything is perfect.”
Both companies hope the tours encourage visitors to keep recycling in mind. When Great Lakes Recycling visitors see the piles of mixed recyclables on the tipping floor, the tour leader always makes the point that “every single item in that pile was held in someone’s hand,” Hawthorne says. That person “made a decision to recycle it rather than throw it away.
“The success of recycling, and the success of our business, is based on these millions and millions and millions of individual decisions, daily,” he says. “I sometimes shudder to think what would happen if people stopped making those decisions—what our industry would look like. It would be catastrophic.”
Jim Fowler is retired publisher and editorial director of Scrap.
Spreading the Recycling Message
Not every scrap facility will be able to accommodate tour groups safely, but that’s just one way to educate the community about recycling and its economic and environmental benefits. Here are some other approaches:
Use your website. Great Lakes Recycling Solutions’ website (www.go-glr.com) complements its tours by giving a written description and a video of its single-stream processing system. An interactive graphic on the page provides even more information: Click on an item in the recycling bin, and the site provides information about that material’s use and recycling. One link on the page leads to a full-color, illustrated flyer of what materials the company accepts and does not accept. (It even suggests what to do if your recyclables don’t all fit in your bin.) Another link leads to a separate website, www.in-the-bin.com, that promotes GLR’s “Recycle! It Works” campaign. The site explains the benefits of recycling and buying recycled products, provides recycling facts, and offers suggestions for boosting recycling in the community.
The home page of City Carton Recycling (Iowa City, Iowa), www.citycarton.com, offers an “educational resources” link, which leads to a page with a long list of organizations that have recycling-related information on their websites: teaching guides for children, state and local environmental and solid waste agencies, national associations involved in recycling or other environmental activities, and more. “The website is our No. 1 communicator,” says Andy Ockenfels, City Carton president and CEO, and the company is hiring a marketing specialist to take the company’s online communications to the next level. “We know we have to upgrade the education portion of our website because it’s a huge part of our success,” he says. “As a company, we have to educate not just about the concept of recycling, but in order to get material in such a fashion that we can recycle it more efficiently and economically.”
Speak at community meetings. City Carton Recycling has sent representatives to clubs, organizations, and schools to talk about recycling since its founding in 1967. Education about recycling is an important community service, Ockenfels says, but it’s also good for the bottom line. “Our ultimate goal is to get more material out of the landfill and into the recycling stream because we survive on tonnage. As a for-profit company, education helps us get more material into the recycling stream that’s not currently there.”
With eight facilities throughout Iowa, Ockenfels says he relies on each location’s manager to promote local educational programs. “There are so many differences as to how the collection and processing is handled in the different locations that we prefer it be handled at the local facility,” he explains. “Our managers are committed to this, and we pride ourselves on partnering with schools, waste agencies, communities, and environmental groups in these programs.”
Make use of ISRI’s resources. ISRI offers several resources members can use to inform their communities about recycling. This summer it produced a new set of fact sheets on the recycling of specific scrap commodities as well as on the history of the scrap industry in the United States, its role in the U.S. economy, how recycling is beneficial to the environment, and more. One fact sheet was designed with children in mind: It contains a dozen unusual recycling facts, such as how many Statues of Liberty you could build with all the copper the U.S. recycles each year. Link to the fact sheets or download them at www.isri.org/factsheets or request copies from Melissa Merz at melissamerz@isri.org or 202/662-8510.
When reaching out to community leaders, ISRI’s recent jobs study might provide valuable information. The study’s data are presented in an interactive map ReMA members can access at www.isri.org/2011scrapjobstudy. The site can pinpoint the jobs, wages, and total economic impact of the for-profit recycling industry in the entire country or a single state, U.S. congressional district, or state senate or house district. The site also can determine the jobs, wages, and economic impact tied to scrap export activity.
ISRI also created the website www.biggerthanthebin.org, which contains a variety of facts about recycling. As the site’s URL suggests, the site makes the point that household recycling is just one part of a much larger scrap recycling industry. Two sets of images on the site show the steel and paper recycling processes. And ReMA produces the popular Scrap Map, an illustrated brochure that opens up into a colorful poster describing the recycling process for aluminum, cars, and paper. Designed for children in kindergarten through 6th grade, the brochure features a word search, maze, and worksheet for kids to list items they can recycle. ReMA members can purchase packages of 25 Scrap Maps for $30 from the online ReMA store at www.isri.org/store. Nonmembers can purchase them from Olga O’Connor at 202/662-8521 or olgaoconnor@isri.org.
ISRI has plans to soon update the Scrap Map and www.biggerthanthebin.org. Further, it’s in the process of hiring an award-winning science education provider to produce and disseminate a curriculum about recycling. The curriculum will contain lesson plans for educators, project ideas, interactive activities, and suggestions on how to involve the community—including parents, policymakers, and students—in recycling. More information on the project will be forthcoming.