Engineering BIR’s Evolution

May/June 2014

The Bureau of International Recycling’s new director general, Alexandre Delacoux, is reshaping the association to better respond to global scrap industry concerns.

By Kent Kiser

Experience in the private, public, and trade association sectors. Fluent in several languages. Have an understanding of complex international regulatory issues and an interest in sustainability. When a headhunter approached Alexandre Delacoux and shared with him the job description for director general at the Bureau of International Recycling (Brussels), “I said, ‘Guys, that’s me!’” he recalls. Now, in his second year at BIR and his ninth month as director general, the 49-year-old Delacoux shares how his life and career led him to the position, the challenges facing the global scrap recycling industry, and his priorities for the association.

Laying the Groundwork

Although he was born in Tournan-en-Brie, a suburb southeast of Paris, Delacoux grew up in Saint-Genis-Pouilly, a French town near the Swiss border about 8 miles from Geneva. Living close to that cosmopolitan city, which reportedly hosts the largest number of international organizations in the world, piqued his interest in global affairs from an early age, he says. It was an interest encouraged by his mother, a United Nations official who worked with the International Organization for Migration (Geneva).

Delacoux split his undergraduate studies between the University of Geneva, where he pursued multidisciplinary political studies, and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva), where he also earned his master’s degree in international relations and international economics. The school’s “great professors” in economics, international public law, politics, and history “were grooming us to become UN officials or diplomats,” he says.

Graduate degree in hand, Delacoux says he first “had a go” at international public service, working as a government affairs specialist at the European Commission (Brussels) for 18 months before deciding he wanted to work in the private sector. He accepted a position with DuPont (Wilmington, Del.) in its international corporate communications department. In his six years there, he held three positions, based first in Paris; then in Mechelen, Belgium; and then back to Brussels. His DuPont experience made him well versed in corporate sustainability efforts, he says, as well as the European Union’s regulations on the registration, evaluation, authorization, and restriction of chemicals, or REACH, which focuses on the production and use of chemical substances and their impact on the environment and human health. While there he also worked with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development in Geneva.

Eventually, Delacoux says, he chose to pursue his interest in sustainability issues on a broader scale. “I decided that I could have the greatest effect at the trade association level, working for [industry] sectors,” he says. “If I could help sectors achieve a different level of sustainability, then I’d feel I was really moving things.” His first association position was a two-year stint with Micropower Europe (Brussels), which serves the renewable energy sector, then he moved to European Biopharmaceutical Enterprises, also in Brussels. He had served there as executive director for two years when the headhunter approached him about the BIR position, posted after Francis Veys announced he was retiring after a 38-year tenure in the role.

As he learned more about the position through the interview process, Delacoux says he found several aspects of it appealing: the job’s international focus, the industry’s rich history and future potential, the prospect of global travel, the association’s nine-person staff, and the promise of working closely with BIR member recycling federations around the world. Although he was new to recycling, his two previous association employers share some of the industry’s concerns, he points out. The biopharmaceutical sector, for instance, is subject to REACH, and it encompasses companies of various sizes with different business approaches and priorities—just like the recycling industry. In addition, he says he was “familiar with the political and some technical dossiers that relate to the recycling industry, ranging from environmentally sound management of facilities and international trade to climate change policies.” Given those commonalities, “it seems that BIR was in the cards for me,” Delacoux says. “It’s amazing to see how things develop. I feel like I’m home.”

Organizational Change

Delacoux signed his contract with BIR in mid-June 2012 and started as general manager that October, with Veys serving as his mentor. To ease his transition into the new job, he consulted The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins, which he calls “the best book ever written about starting any job at any company.” He also canvassed BIR’s volunteer leaders, interviewing them and sending them a simple questionnaire about the association’s performance, challenges, and priorities.

From those initial interviews, he drew some hypotheses and developed a list of priorities, which he discussed via conference call with the BIR executive committee. “The committee asked me to bring about incremental change,” he says. “They didn’t want a revolution; instead, they wanted an evolution.” With the committee’s input on the association’s priorities, Delacoux next discussed them with the BIR member federations, including ISRI, and made adjustments based on their feedback. He presented his final plan to BIR’s advisory council at the association’s convention in Shanghai in May 2013. “Taking a job that covers the world was a bit overwhelming, and everybody told me it would be a huge challenge,” he says. “That’s why I had to bring it down to a few sets of priorities that were clear and accepted.”

One initial priority is to reorgan­ize BIR’s three daughter associations—the European Ferrous Recov­ery and Recycling Federation, Euro­pean Metal Trade and Recycling Federation, and European Recovered Paper Associa­tion—into one separate entity with its own secretary general. Previously, Veys provided oversight to those federations—which share BIR’s office space in Brussels—as their secretary general. The new, unified group, named the European Recycling Industries Confederation, will be the principal lobbying organization for European recyclers, and it will invite other commodities beyond metals and paper to join. In short, this group will serve as the European equivalent of ISRI. The staff will remain in the BIR office, and Delacoux will sit on its board of directors, but it will be “legalized and organized outside of BIR, so we can focus on our agenda,” he says. This separation of the two entities “enhances BIR’s role as a global organization and enables me to focus my agenda on the international work,” he adds.

Another priority is to change how the BIR secretariat operates, such as by implementing procedures to measure the quality of its service to members. As an example, Delacoux notes that the secretariat used to receive member requests via e-mail and forward them to the appropriate staff person, but “nothing was measured.” Now BIR has a tracking system that logs each request in its computer system and records details about when and how the staff addressed it. “That way, we can measure the speed of response, build a knowledge base of already-asked questions, and determine if we have the necessary staff and tools in place, among other advantages,” he says.

Such new approaches will allow BIR to determine if it needs additional staff to adequately address member needs. “We’re nine people dealing with a worldwide membership of roughly 850 companies and a network of 43 federations covering more than 70 countries,” Delacoux says. “That explains why a top priority is to rework the secretariat to make sure we work with the most efficient tools available. That will then enable me to tell the executive committee if I need additional staff.” A related priority is hiring a convention manager and recruiting BIR members to serve on a convention committee. Previously, Veys played a hands-on role in organizing BIR’s biannual meetings, a task that claimed a considerable amount of his time. Delacoux plans to oversee those activities but not be engaged “in every single bit,” he says. “That will free up my time to focus on the international agenda that I’m hired to develop.”

He also is making changes to BIR’s meetings, such as hosting the first International Textile Recycling Summit at its convention June 2-4 in Miami Beach. That summit will bring together the many players in the textile recycling business, giving them a forum to discuss current issues and international market trends in their sector. “This is particularly exciting for me since it shows the commitment of the BIR leadership” to new ideas to enhance the meetings, he says.

Delacoux already has done his share of globetrotting for BIR, including three visits to China; stops in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, United Arab Emirates; a few visits to the United States to visit ISRI’s headquarters and attend its 2013 and 2014 conventions; and numerous trips within Europe. “They should give me a special airfare for the trip from Brussels to Geneva,” he quips. “We’re very much involved with many international agencies there, such as the Basel Convention.” Such international travel is part of the job, but it can make it difficult to manage affairs at the secretariat. That is why he is proposing that BIR volunteer leaders travel at times to represent the organization on various matters. “That’s happening in China,” he notes. “We’re much more present in China than I could ever be on my own, thanks notably to Bob Stein of Alter Trading, David Chiao of Uni-All, Mark Sellier of OneSteel Asia, and Michael Lion of Sims Metal Management Asia.”

A World of Challenges

Delacoux says his travels so far and his yearlong apprenticeship under Veys have given him a solid understanding of the challenges recyclers are facing in the international arena. Protectionism is a serious concern, as the difficult economic conditions in recent years have led various countries to propose trade restrictions to protect their home economies and industries, he explains. BIR opposes any such actions that restrict the free and fair trade of recyclable materials. “In our view, their arguments are flawed,” Delacoux says, noting that scrap exports create jobs and stimulate economic growth, among other benefits. “You’re better off with free trade than a closed border.”

Countries can take other actions that hinder the trade of recyclables as well. Offering one example, Delacoux notes that each EU member country has its own interpretation of Annex 7, which defines the documentation that must accompany container shipments as part of EU regulation 1013/2006 on the shipment of “wastes.” Inconsistent practices at borders are a “nightmare” for international traders trying to ship material, he says. In Europe, the problem raises a specific concern that the single European market is not developing. “We’re facing situations that make trading within Europe and in other parts of the world more and more difficult,” he says.

Scrap theft—within countries as well as from shipping containers in transit—continues to be “a completely international problem,” Delacoux says. BIR member federations such as ReMA and the Canadian Association of Recycling Industries (Ajax, Ontario) are addressing this problem within their respective borders, and some—including BIR—are taking a bigger-picture perspective on it. BIR, for instance, is working with the International Maritime Bureau (London), INTERPOL (Lyon, France), and its member federations to build a database of scrap-theft incidents in global trade and develop strategies for combatting the problem.

The growing prevalence of certifications in the recycling industry is a positive trend, but Delacoux is concerned that the proliferation of different certifications and standards can create problems “if they are not compatible with each other.” Some BIR members have as many as seven different certifications, he says, depending on the markets in which they operate, each one of which requires a significant investment of time and money to maintain. “This is a conversation we’re pursuing in Geneva” with the International Organization for Standardization, he says. “We can’t impose anything, but we can give them information on the realities of the business.”

In the longer term, the recycling industry faces a rising tide of regulations at the national, regional, and international levels, Delacoux says. In this area, BIR plans to work with its member federations to address upcoming legislative and regulatory issues to help ensure a level playing field for the industry from country to country. “This is easier said than done,” he says, “because public policies can differ widely around the world.” BIR will keep a close watch on these and other issues, Delacoux says, while moving forward with its priorities.

Rather than being daunted by the significant work that lies ahead, Delacoux is excited about his future with BIR. “It’s not easy, but it’s fun,” he says. “It’s the start of a journey; it’s just beginning.”