The Pull of Paper

September/October 2008

Ray Petermeyer tried retirement, but it couldn't compete with his more than 60-year attachment to the paper recycling business.

By Kent Kiser

For Ray Petermeyer, what started out as just a job turned into a career, and then into a calling. He has worked for 61 years—and counting—in paper recycling. He loves the industry so much, in fact, that he gave up on retirement to get back into the game. Today, at age 83, he says he has no desire to stop working. Recycling is his avocation as well as his vocation. "The recycling business is my hobby," he says.

Finding His Niche
Unlike many senior statesmen in the recycling industry, Petermeyer did not grow up in a family scrap business. His father, who was blinded in one eye in World War I, worked at a variety of jobs in Beatrice, Neb., where Ray was born in 1925. The family relocated to Renton, Wash., a suburb of Seattle, around 1936. Prior to the move, Petermeyer explains, his mother became gravely ill with typhoid fever. An aunt who lived in Renton came to Nebraska to care for her, and she convinced the family to move back with her. That way, she could continue caring for Petermeyer's mother, and the climate would be better for his mother's health.

Petermeyer found the Pacific Northwest to his liking—so much so that he has rarely left the region since. He grew up as "pretty much a normal child," he says, riding his bike and participating in track and football at Renton High School. There, he received excellent grades in shorthand class, so he considered pursuing a career as a court reporter after high school.

Before Petermeyer graduated, however, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor drew the United States into World War II. He was able to defer military service long enough to earn his diploma, then in 1943 he entered the U.S. Army. He spent his first year putting his typing and shorthand skills to use at Camp John T. Knight in Oakland, Calif., he says, then he received medical training at Fort Lewis, Wash., and Fort Howze, Texas, before joining the 3rd Armored Division in December 1944 at the Battle of the Bulge. For that crucial battle, "every able-bodied person was shipped overseas," Petermeyer recalls. He fought in Europe until the end of the war, then he remained as part of the occupation force until February 1946.

Among the lessons Petermeyer learned from his military service, he says, is that he didn't want to be a court reporter. After his discharge, he attended Metropolitan Business College in Seattle, taking business courses at night for about six months. During the day, he worked in the insurance department of the Veterans Administration. At that job, Petermeyer recalls, he sat next to a man who had been at the same desk for 20 years. "I decided that wasn't for me," he says.

So, in August 1947, he left college and the VA job and answered an ad for a weighmaster at the Seattle plant of Independent Paper Stock Co. (San Francisco). "I didn't even know what a weighmaster was at the time," he recounts, but the opportunity sounded intriguing. Several other men applied for the position, but Petermeyer got it, he says, because he agreed to work for $190 a month—$10 less than the other applicants.

At first, this was just a job like any other. But in 1951, Independent Paper Stock promoted him to plant manager of its processing plant in Tacoma, Wash. In that position, Petermeyer says, he found that he enjoyed calling on new accounts, increasing the plant's tonnage, managing the facility's operations, assisting the workers in the warehouse, and doing paperwork, among the job's other duties. "It never got boring," he says. He had found his calling.

During his 30 years with Independent Paper Stock, Petermeyer held a variety of positions of increasing responsibility. After 16 years as the Tacoma manager, he took on the same role at the Portland, Ore., operation from 1967 to 1974. Over the next three years, he advanced quickly from Northwest buyer to the two jointly held positions of Central California regional manager and Northwest regional manager.

In 1977, the owners of Independent Paper Stock put the company up for sale, giving competitors and other prospective buyers access to its financial records. That move made it difficult for the firm to compete in the marketplace and eroded employee morale, Petermeyer says. During that period, he received a job offer to join Northwest Paper Fiber as production manager of its facility in Portland. After 30 years with Independent Paper Stock, he decided it was time for a change and accepted the new position.

After a three-year stint with Northwest  Paper Fiber, he founded E-Z Recycling in 1980 in collaboration with a grocery store chain. In addition to recycling all the paper generated by the grocery chain, E-Z handled paper from many other accounts in the Portland area, including OCC, ONP, mixed paper, white and colored ledger, hard white envelope stock, and other high grades. E-Z subsequently merged with Portland-based Far West Fibers in 1982, and Petermeyer continued to lead E-Z as general manager until 1993, then as vice president up until his retirement in 2000.

Petermeyer is the first to admit that he was a terrible retiree. Even after founding a paper recycling consulting firm—Del-Ray Enterprises—and signing on as West Coast associate for another firm, Moore & Associates (Atlanta), he found he had too much time on his hands. He also was working with a nonprofit that operated three recycling drop-off centers in Portland, helping the group increase its collected tonnage and grow from a $60,000 annual operating loss to break-even. Despite those gains, the organization decided to exit the business, so Petermeyer purchased the three Portland Recycling Centers, officially ending his retirement and returning to the recycling trade.

Petermeyer now works about four hours a day on the business, which accepts ferrous and nonferrous metals, glass, plastic, paper, electronics, and a few other items. He starts early and visits each location every day, wrapping up his business around lunchtime. He operates this latest venture by the same principle he followed in his previous positions: He treats customers and employees the way he'd like to be treated. To him, that means treating people fairly and living up to his obligations. That approach has worked swimmingly, judging by Petermeyer's sustained success over six decades in the business. His approach inspired one employee so much that he followed Petermeyer to three separate locations, just so he could continue working for him. 

An Association Advocate
As Petermeyer progressed through his paper recycling career, he built a second career of sorts in the industry's trade association. To this day, he recalls his first exposure to the National Association of Recycling Industries, an ReMA predecessor association that represented nonferrous and nonmetallic commodities, including paper. It was about 1972, and Petermeyer was living in Portland when the regional NARI chapter held a dinner meeting there. His employer, Independent Paper Stock, was a NARI member, so he attended the event and found a lot of value in the networking and camaraderie the association offered.

That experience stayed with him through the years, and when he founded E-Z Recycling in 1980, he joined NARI and started to participate in its activities. His greatest involvement came after NARI became part of ReMA in 1987, when he served in all leadership positions of the Paper Stock Industries Chapter, including a stint as president from 1998 to 2000. In that post, he worked to persuade ReMA's scrap metal members to join the PSI Chapter because many of them handled paper in addition to metals. His ReMA service also included sitting on the association's national board as the representative of the nonmetallic division. Throughout it all, he says, he formed lasting friendships and beneficial business ties, gained and shared knowledge, and had a lot of fun.

For his years of service to the PSI Chapter, Petermeyer received its Phil Alpert Memorial Award in 2006, which honors individuals who have served more than 10 years as a PSI Chapter leader and contributed to the advancement of the scrap paper industry. At the award ceremony, the chapter noted his "passion, longevity, versatility, and integrity." That was just one of many awards and accolades he has received throughout his career.

Though Petermeyer has not held an association leadership position for several years, he remains a fixture at the PSI Chapter's meetings, proving that his connections—both personal and professional—run deep, and that you're never too old to keep learning new things and sharing what you've learned.  

Adapting to Change
You don't work more than 60 years in an industry without witnessing some dramatic changes, and Petermeyer has seen quite a few in his long career. Back in the 1950s, he recalls, he used to bundle newspaper with twine and use a wheeled cart to load the bundles manually into boxcars. "Most times it took two days to load," he says, "but one time, I alone loaded a boxcar with 100,000 pounds of newspaper in a 12-hour shift." To this day, he admits, "my back feels it."

In that same era, he notes, some paper recyclers used to export newsprint in 100-pound bales, which they would make using the hydraulic mechanism from a barber chair. After compressing the newsprint into a dense package, they would bind the material and ship it.

For years, Petermeyer continues, paper processors had only vertical upstroke balers for producing larger bales. Those machines pale in comparison with today's advanced horizontal single- and two-ram balers, which revolutionized the scrap paper processing industry, he says. Those machines allow recyclers to make larger, denser bales at a much faster rate, boosting production and, hence, revenue.

Petermeyer also has seen major changes back and forth in how recyclers collect and sort scrap paper. From the 1930s through the 1950s, paper processors received mixed scrap paper, and they had to hand sort the material into different grades. In the 1960s and 1970s, processors persuaded their commercial suppliers to separate their grades up front. Then, in the late 1970s, waste-hauling companies told paper generators not to separate their paper and, instead, throw it in the trash as they were in the landfill business, Petermeyer says. In the 1980s, material recovery facilities began to appear, and processors—including virtually all waste haulers—had to install equipment to handle single-stream recyclables.

Global developments over the years also have changed the roster of countries that buy U.S. scrap paper. Petermeyer recalls, for instance, when China and today's other top Asian paper consumers weren't even blips on the radar screen. In the late 1970s, he notes, Canada and Mexico were the largest international buyers of U.S. recovered fiber. Those countries are still significant consumers, but China has emerged in the past decade as the undisputed market mover and shaker, with South Korea, India, Taiwan, and other Asian countries also claiming top positions. U.S. scrap paper exporters also have changed how they ship their fiber overseas: what once traveled loose as break-bulk cargo now moves as baled material in 20- or 40-foot containers, he observes. International consumers also have shifted the market demand for certain paper grades, with Asian mills becoming big buyers of mixed paper, which they sort themselves using cheap manual labor. "Mixed paper used to be hard to get rid of," Petermeyer says, "but now it's desirable."

Over time, he continues, once-significant grades of scrap paper have become obsolete, such as tabulating cards; others have greatly diminished, such as computer printout paper; and others are newly created, such as unsorted office paper. The mix of materials in the recycling stream has changed as well. Years ago, plastic and metal containers joined paper as key residential recyclables; now Petermeyer sees electronics showing up at his recycling centers in increasing numbers. He charges a fee to accept e-scrap items, he says, because the company must pay a fee to ensure the items are recycled responsibly.

Those are a lot of changes for anyone to experience, but Petermeyer has seemed to thrive on them. That adaptability to change may be one key to his longevity in the recycling business. As he reflects on his long and distinguished career, he points with particular pride to two of his accomplishments. The first is founding E-Z Recycling in 1980 and opening its first facility in the Swan Island Industrial Park, northeast of downtown Portland. The second is serving as president of the PSI Chapter and as an ReMA board member as chair of the nonmetallic division.

Petermeyer expects his next major accomplishment will be beating the skin cancer doctors diagnosed him with three years ago. He's attacked it with two surgeries and radiation treatment earlier this year. Showing the fighting spirit from his World War II days, he asserts that this health setback "hasn't stopped me. I feel good." You have to take such life challenges with a grain of salt, he says. "These things happen, and you try to live through them."

Given this latest battle, it's no surprise that Petermeyer has slowed down at little in recent years, but he has no plans to retire again. Aside from an annual trip to Maui with his wife, he fills his days with his dual passions of golf and recycling. Regarding the former, he notes that he hits the ball a shorter distance every year, but he still enjoys the game. Likewise for recycling. "If it ever gets to the point where I don't enjoy it, then I'll hang it up," he says. After 61 years, that has yet to happen. •

Kent Kiser is publisher and editor-in-chief of Scrap.