July/August 1992
With the rallying cry "I'm old enough to know and young enough to do," John Kis hopes to lead CARI into a new era of strength and success.
By Kent Kiser
Kent Kiser is associate editor of Scrap Processing and Recycling.
What must be done to make the Canadian Association of Recycling Industries (CARI) (Don Mills, Ontario ) viable through the remainder of the century? That was the question asked by CARI's officers and scrap executives attending the association's annual convention, held in Montreal in May. As a result of scrap industry attrition, bankruptcies, and mergers, CARI membership has dwindled, putting "an enormous strain on the association's funding," said John Kis, International Iron & Metal Co. (Hamilton, Ontario), who was elected at the convention to serve as the association's new president. "CARI is facing some very difficult times ahead, and action is needed."
As a first step toward its new start, CARI elected a new executive committee—"a very active, dynamic leadership," Kis asserted—and appointed each officer to spearhead plans related to one specific issue for the association, a move that will increase board responsibility to ensure progress. In addition, all have been charged with recruiting new members. "We have to make sure we have sufficient members to represent a cross-section of our industry," Kis explained, "as well as sufficient funds to provide CARI's current services and extend them in the future."
On the member level, Kis vowed to increase participation on CARI's committees and fledgling provincial chapters in Quebec, Ontario, and Alberta. These groups, which he called "the lifeblood of any volunteer organization," will establish a CARI presence at the grass-roots level and help it address provincial/regional concerns more directly. But key to increased member action, he noted, will be more effective communications between CARI's headquarters and its members.
This focus on expanded action and renewed commitment was also voiced by other CARI officers, including outgoing President Larry Kummer, London Salvage & Trading Co. Ltd. (London, Ontario). "CARI is like a piece of equipment," he said. "Your investment doesn't stop with the purchase. It takes a lot of time, effort, and money to maintain it in peak form."
Overcoming Adversity
"Even with its limited resources," Kis observed, "CARI has accomplished a lot." In recent years, for instance, the association has developed "excellent relationships" with other industry groups and major Canadian corporations, as well as gained the respect of the Canadian government. "Today, government officials consult CARI prior to formulating new laws and regulation," he said. "They recognize the association as the voice of commercial Canadian recyclers." As an example, he noted, CARI helped form an industry task force that worked with the Canadian government on international trade issues, such as the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous and Other Wastes.
Len G. Shaw of the materials branch of Industry, Science, and Technology Canada (Ottawa)—a government office—agreed with Kis, saying, "Government has reached an era where it realizes that input from industry is essential to developing meaningful and sensible policies and programs." He asserted that "an association like CARI can be essential. It helps me accomplish my work and properly represent your industry within the government." He warned the crowd, however, that "fragmentation of industry associations reduces the effectiveness of communications."
Shaw urged CARI to strive to educate the public and media because they influence government officials. Kummer reinforced this point, saying, "The public must be told again and again that we are the solution, not the problem."
During his upcoming two years as president, Kis seems confident that CARI will expand on its successes, increasing its presence and strength with the public, government, and other recyclers. "It's obvious that taking the presidency at this time, I'm facing a tremendous challenge, but challenges have always inspired me," he said. "There's no question that the association will survive."
Seeking Business Success
In addition to charting a course for its own survival, CARI provided several workshops in Montreal that addressed the business and environmental concerns of its members.
To prosper in the future, scrap recyclers must improve their cooperation and communications with their consumers, asserted Brian P. Cochran, Wabash Alloys (Wabash, Ind.). "It's going to be more difficult to survive," he noted, "so we have to find more ways to improve ourselves." Aluminum ingot makers such as Wabash must meet the growing demands of their customers, which means they need scrap recyclers to be their partners in quality—ensuring reliable delivery of scrap, maintaining a high level of quality in every shipment ("We hate surprises," Cochran said), packaging and shipping scrap so it can be easily handled and unloaded, and submitting all necessary documentation, such as material safety data sheets.
Quality is a two-way street, Cochran acknowledged, and consumers must also let scrap recyclers know their needs and expectations. As part of its quality push, Wabash has begun rating its scrap suppliers, he said, rewarding excellent suppliers and helping poor performers improve. Firms that do not improve will receive less and less business fromWabash , he said.
Mark Pasis, MSP Metal Trading (Mississauga, Ontario), echoed Cochran's thoughts: "Consumers, ever-mindful of their own costs, are becoming more demanding in their scrap specifications every day." The first step toward meeting consumer specifications—and making a profit—is to know how to make prudent purchases through accurate identification of scrap materials. "The most efficient processing facility in the world can't make up for a bad purchase," Pasis noted.
Before purchasing a load of scrap, he advised, recyclers should ask themselves these questions: What scrap am I considering? How will I process it? How much will processing cost? What are the hidden costs? What is the cost of amortization (the time between paying for scrap and receiving payment from a consumer)? What is the finished product worth? What profit margin do I need? "Educating our suppliers and buying material right the first time is the only way to protect ourselves from extra costs," Pasis said.
Beyond making savvy scrap purchases, recyclers must promote quality control in every aspect of their operations if they wish to satisfy consumers. One important step is to educate employees on how to properly grade and sort material, as well as how to package, tag, and weigh each outgoing load. "Proper grading and sorting by a knowledgeable production staff can reduce downgrades and rejections," Pasis said. "By knowing and satisfying the needs of your different consumers, you can maximize the value of your scrap and develop steady consumers by giving them a quality scrap package to the specifications they desire and delivering it on time."
On the management level, Pasis recommended that recyclers sell scrap at current market value and not hold it for speculation; develop more than one "home" for each scrap grade; determine and control operation costs; invest in safety, training, and preventive maintenance programs; and keep up with new trends, ideas, and processes that could improve operations.
The Shredder Fluff Puzzle
In the environmental arena, Canadian scrap recyclers—like their counterparts throughout the Western World—are facing serious problems regarding disposal of auto shredder residue (ASR), or shredder fluff. The reason is that, depending on the testing method used and the provincial regulations governing it, ASR could be deemed to contain hazardous levels of lead, chromium, and cadmium, said Michael Day, a chemist with the Institute for Environmental Chemistry, National Research Council Canada (Ottawa), at CARI's "Environmental Realities" forum.
Quebec's leachate test, for example, which is similar to the Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure in the United States, is "more demanding" than Ontario's test, Day said, in that it requires twice the amount of sample mass, uses a more acidic medium, and uses a buffering agent to balance the sample's pH level, which increases the solubility of lead in ASR . "There is a problem with ASR ," he asserted, "but I think it's a Quebec problem, related to the severity of the Quebec testing protocol."
On a positive note, Day observed that, in general, less than 2 percent of the total lead in ASR is leachable. "In fact," he said, "ASR can act to absorb a larger quantity of lead," so, ironically," ASR could potentially be a solution to the lead problem."
Beyond leachability, recyclers are concerned about the growing quantity of plastics used in new cars, which is adding to the ASR stream. Most automotive plastics can be recycled, said Tom J. Orton, Dow Chemical Canada Inc. (Sarnia, Ontario). "There is a value to recovered plastics if they can be brought to the plastic industry in a usable fashion." The presence of dirt, incompatible resins, and non-plastic materials, however, has prevented their widespread recovery, he said, noting that "purity is absolutely critical during the melting and molding steps of thermoplastics and thermosets." Markets for mixed automotive plastics are developing, he said, but it will be a long time before these markets can absorb the plastics in ASR .
In the next 20 years, the shredder fluff situation promises only to get worse, noted Syd Melbourne, Dofasco Inc. (Hamilton, Ontario), citing a recent study on car recycling by Arthur D. Little Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.). In fact, according to the study, the 2.4 million tons of ASR currently generated every year will increase to 4.1 million tons a year by 2010.
Until a widespread solution to the ASR problem is developed, shredder operators will continue to face environmental restrictions and escalating disposal costs, which could have devastating results, Melbourne asserted. In a worst-case scenario, he explained, the amount of plastics in cars will continue to grow, reducing the amount of recoverable metal, increasing shredder operators' disposal costs, and diminishing—or erasing—their profits. As a result, some shredder operators will reduce their production or close altogether, leaving spent cars unprocessed and reducing ferrous scrap availability. Then, government will have to step in with laws and regulations to keep car recycling alive.
In the meantime, ASR is increasingly being used as a daily cover for landfills, Orton said, and it is an "excellent fuel" for cement kilns. Other recovery and disposal options for shredder fluff include briquetting, pyrolysis, gasification, vitrification, chemical treatment, and incineration in a fluidized bed, rotary furnace, or plasma smelter, noted Richard Voyer, a chemist with Centre de Recherche Industrie Quebec (Sainte-Foy, Quebec). There's other hope on the horizon in terms of automakers' disassembly programs and Design for Recycling [R] efforts, but "vehicles that are being built now won't be scrapped until 2003," Melbourne noted. "Time is not on our side."
The Municipal Recycling Menace
Scrap recyclers may not see municipal recycling programs as a threat to their industry right now, but "the present recycling crises are driven on the municipal level and are spilling over onto the industrial level," said convention keynote speaker Harvey Alter, U.S. Chamber of Commerce (Washington, D.C.)
Alter reviewed the dynamics of municipal recycling programs, noting that they are based on unrealistic percentage goals, wrongly focus on the packaging sector of the municipal solid waste (MSW) stream, and are not based on supply/demand market fundamentals. "In the future, there'll be less to recycle, people won't participate, and we won't have the labor to do it, so municipal recycling may collapse," most likely in about 15 years, he predicted. "We can't recycle our way out of the MSW problem. Arithmetically, it's impossible."
To bolster their recycling numbers, municipal officials will start counting white goods, spent cars, construction and demolition debris, and scrap asphalt in their recycling rates. "Intrusion into the scrap business is the next step after that," Alter asserted.
To counter this move, scrap companies must persuade municipalities to work with existing private recyclers, paying for the municipal recyclables or charging a low fee if necessary to improve processors' margins on such materials. "Somehow that partnership is going to have to be forged," Alter said. •
With the rallying cry "I'm old enough to know and young enough to do," John Kis hopes to lead CARI into a new era of strength and success.