July/August 1996
More and more recyclers are finding the internet to be a useful tool for communicating and collecting information from all over the world.
By Paul Belden
Paul Belden is associate editor of Scrap.
The internet? It’s a computer thing, right? Thanks, but no thanks. My kid says it’s fun, but I just don’t think my business needs it.
Maybe. For the time being.
But before you get your mind set against the ’net, think back to the time—just a few years ago—when fax machines first started popping up in offices around the world. Remember what a pain they were? How they practically gave up if they saw you coming with more than 10 pages in your hand? How they liked to translate important incoming messages into hieroglyphics even Indiana Jones couldn’t decipher? Remember standing there, halfway through feeding a 40-page document through the machine a page at a time, and thinking to yourself: What’s the point?
How times do change. Today there’s hardly an industry or a part of the world in which a company without a fax machine can expect to be taken seriously. And online veterans in the recycling world say the time is fast approaching when the same will truly be said of a company without e-mail and internet access. These scrap execs see the internet as a giant wave that promises to lift the recycling industry to new heights of instantaneous worldwide communication and data collection. And the industry, they say, has no choice but to catch the wave and enjoy the ride.
As a matter of fact, quite a few companies and organizations involved in recycling and related endeavors have already caught this wave. They’re sending e-mail, downloading information, checking commodity prices, making trade contacts, and advertising their services—all at the push of a button.
“For those of us who trade in scrap, the exchange of information is our bread and butter,” says Peter Mathews, chairman and managing director of Black Country Metals Ltd. (West Midlands, England), which is presently gearing up for e-mail and setting up what Mathews promises will be a “brief but punchy” home page. “I do think this will give us a little bit of an edge. We want to be a leader in our field,” he says.
Also leading the industry into cyberspace is ISRI, which recently unveiled its own home page—located at http://www.isri.org—and plans to expand it significantly by the end of the year, says Mark Sherman, ISRI’s director of information services. In its final form, the ReMA internet site will be split into two parts, he says: one for public access and one for association members only (which will be password-protected or guarded from general access in other ways). Among the expected features of the members-only section is an electronic membership directory that will always be up-to- date and will be able to be searched by company name, executive’s name, state, commodity handled, or type of service offered. The members-only section also might include environmental compliance documents, the text of pertinent legislation, and daily commodity market updates.
“Basically, we want the ReMA home page to be our members’ first stop on the internet,” Sherman says. “This may be the most valuable membership enhancement tool we’ve ever provided. It helps ReMA overcome three perennial problems we’ve experienced with getting information out to our members: the time it takes, the cost of publication, and the need to get important information to the right person at a member company.”
Folks who drop by the public-access part of the ReMA web site will be able to learn about ReMA and the scrap recycling industry, ask questions, send messages, and follow links to other recycling-related web pages. Plans are for this section also to include a kids’ page for youngsters interested in recycling. And, eventually, users may be able to browse through current and back copies of the magazine you’re reading right now. :-)
(For online rookies, that little symbol at the end of the last paragraph—quite common in e-mail—means, roughly, “I’m grinning as I type this.” For a direct translation, look at it with the page turned sideways.)
A New Avenue for Buying and Selling
Another feature of the ReMA internet site will be links to the small but growing number of home pages operated by members.
These sites run the gamut from Allied Scrap Processors Inc.’s (Lakeland, Fla.) simple billboard-style page, which features an aerial photograph of the company’s operations, along with its name, address, and telephone number, to the veritable multimedia circus operated by Reynolds Metals Co. (Richmond, Va.), whose multi-page site contains a plethora of levels, links, and pointers.
While none of these companies has seen its presence on the internet change its business, yet, they do have a number of positive things to say about being online. “It opens up a new avenue where buyers and sellers can get together,” says Paul Strickland, national scrap manager for Reynolds Metals.
Bruce Fox, vice president of Markovits & Fox (San Jose), has witnessed just that. “I’ve been surprised by the number of hits we’ve received,” he says, referring to the number of times someone has “visited” the company’s home page since it went online in March. “We’ve had inquiries from all over the world. A lot of have been generic e-mail, but some have been substantive queries that we’ve been able to follow up on.”
Louis Padnos Iron & Metal Co. (Holland, Mich.) likewise credits its home page with putting the firm’s traders in touch with scrap buyers and sellers they might not otherwise have known about. According to Robert Eller, manager of information systems, the site has drawn “inquiries from both stateside and beyond—China, Hong Kong, Australia, literally from around the world.”
A flood of incoming e-mail does have its downside, however. Just ask the person who has to wade through it all.
When the Padnos home page went online in January, “the responses were coming in fast and furious,” says Bob Stein, the company’s manager of nonferrous metals. “Now they’re finally tapering off, thank God. Unfortunately, I feel a moral obligation to respond to every inquiry. And some of them, well, they’re like, ‘Hello from Bombay. I want to buy your scrap. Please quote your lowest price.’”
To deal with generic or uninformed inquiries, Stein has created a standard “form letter” that describes the company, thanks the sender, and gently declines to discuss price specifics.
The problem, though, is that it can be hard to write a form letter suitable for all occasions. Some of the messages that come dropping in through the e-mail slot are downright strange.
Jon Pardue, the webmaster who maintains Reynolds Metals Co.’s home page, once got an e-mail from three guys in a punk band called Supernova who claimed to be playing music to raise money to repair their spaceship, which had crash-landed on Earth by mistake.
“Part of their stage act involved covering everything in the theater—stage, amps, seats, walls, everything—with aluminum foil. They contacted me for a mailing address, then sent some CDs, cassettes, and a video, along with a request for us to sponsor them,” Pardue says.
Caught without a suitable form reply, Pardue was forced to improvise. He pondered the possibilities. Ignore them? Harsh. Sponsor them? “Our PR folks didn’t quite think they fit in with our corporate image.” What to do?
Pardue thought it over and sent them “a few sample boxes of foil and some Reynolds aluminum ashtrays.” The band seemed to appreciate it, and Pardue’s now a fan.
A Universe of Possibilities
Scrap recyclers and space creatures aren’t the only ones getting wired these days. You can now find a home page for almost any entity that might conceivably be of interest to a scrap executive, as the guide on page 66 demonstrates. In it, you’ll find site listings for government agencies; commodities exchanges; scrap-processing equipment suppliers; metals and paper associations; recycling organizations; industry, business, and general publications; environmental outfits; and more—the list expands daily.
For instance, are you:
- Curious as to what’s been happening lately with Superfund reform? Go see Thomas: Legislative Information on the Net, where you can download the latest draft of the Superfund Recycling Equity Act.
- Trying to find the daily scoop on metals prices? Click on over to American Metal Market’s home page.
- Wondering what’s up with military scrap? Visit the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service’s site, where you can learn about every lot of scrap being offered for bid at every military base in the country—and submit a bid for one while you’re at it.
- Looking for the latest business news? Try the brand-new interactive edition of the Wall Street Journal.
- Interested in global environmental issues? Go see the European Environment Agency’s home page.
- Pondering any question—any question at all—about copper? Go wade through the 70,000 (at last count) copper-related documents on file at the joint home page of the Copper Development Association and the International Copper Association (and while you’re there, be sure to check out the cool photographic montage they’ve put together using images of copper in various forms).
- Mystified by the ISO 14000 environmental management standard? Drop by the home page of quality systems registrar.
- International Approval Services.
In fact, the ’net comprises such a wide universe of possibilities that it can be daunting to newcomers. “The internet is the world’s biggest library—but it’s one without a card catalogue,” says Robert Garino, ISRI’s director of commodities.
Frank Giglia Jr., vice president of Allied Scrap Processors, who’s had web access for more than two years, offers a different metaphor. “They call it the information superhighway, but it’s not,” he says. “The internet’s an ocean.”
And finding a useful web site, he says, is like deep-sea fishing. “Once you find a spot where the fish are biting, you always remember that spot. You go back there again and again. That’s what the internet’s like. The information there is invaluable, and once you find it, you don’t have to go searching for it again and again.”
A Trip Through Cyberspace
Sometimes, though, it can be fun just to cruise around and see what turns up. You can never really tell what you’ll find. Some stuff will be junk; other stuff will be tremendously useful. “Once I was just fooling around and happened upon a bunch of scrap dealers in Chile,” says Stein.
To illustrate the haphazard nature of the web, here’s a partial re-creation of a recent jaunt through cyberspace I took as part of the research for this article. In all respects, it’s a typical example of what you can expect on the web.
This particular trip starts at a search engine, which is a site where you type in a keyword and are provided with a list of sites containing that particular word. For this trip, I type in the keywords “scrap,” “recycling,” and “metals” and click the button. Now let’s see what comes up.
Hmm, this looks interesting: “A wanted to buy offer from Pacific Rim ...” Let’s check it out. (Point and click.)
Here we are at the home page of Pacific Rim Commodities Inc., a company that says it is willing to buy “electric motor scrap (sealed, mixed, and breakdowns), copper scrap (all types), and closeout and distressed merchandise (consumer goods). Other commodities and products considered.” Looks like they’re trying to fill the hold of some outbound merchant ship—probably destined for the Pacific Rim, eh? Since I can’t help them there, let’s go back to the search engine and see what else it has come up with. (Point and click.)
What’s this? A site purporting to reveal “The Laws of Recycling”? Can’t pass this up. (Point and click.)
Hmm, looks like a manifesto of some sort, seemingly written by a graduate student who’s been too long in school: “Corollary: The most important boost universal recycling can have is the universal closing of all dumps.” It goes on like that for three pages, like something the Una-bomber might have posted before he burned his computer and moved out to the woods. So I go back to the search engine. (Point and click.)
Here’s a site called “Europe’s Recycling Centre.” Let’s see what’s up with this. (Point and click.)
This seems to be a page of links to various web sites that deal with the recycling industry in Europe. Could be useful. Let’s scroll down and see. It has a library of articles on recycling, a list of recycling associations in the United Kingdom, a list of magazines covering the European recycling industry, a list of recycling conferences and exhibitions, a directory of recycling companies in Europe, and a page of classified ads from recyclers and equipment dealers. This site seems worth saving. One of its links is to the home page of Reynolds Metals Co., so let’s go see what’s up there. (Point and click.)
This site is very nice—tons of pages and all kinds of information. One page is titled “Market Focus: Aluminum Cans—Learn About the Amazing Aluminum Can!” Another invites us to explore “Innovations in Aluminum.” Other pages describe the company itself: its corporate structure, divisions and subsidiaries, market focus. It even offers a way to download its annual report. Instead, I decide to see what’s on the “What’s New” page. (Point and click.)
Here’s an icon inviting me to celebrate the first birthday of the Reynolds Metals home page. While I’m here, I may as well join in the festivities. (Point and click.)
“Our web site is one year old this month, and we needed a cake for the celebration! Betty and Pat, Reynolds home economists, sent us this special recipe from the Reynolds Wrap Kitchens.” Sounds good, wouldn’t you say?
Scrolling down, I find a recipe for a cake that will come out shaped like a birthday balloon if you make it in a special pan fashioned out of cardboard and heavy-duty Reynolds Wrap.
Well.
A recipe?
I must say, I’m disappointed. I was kind of hoping to download the cake.
Following is a list of web sites that recyclers may find useful. It is by no means comprehensive because the number of recycling-related sites on the web is constantly expanding. If you know of a site that you think belongs on this list, please let us know.
Recycling Companies
Allied Scrap Processors Inc., http://www.lakeland.tsolve.com/~allied
David J. Joseph Co., http://www.djj.com
Markovits & Fox, http://www.wavenet.com/lynk/clients/m&f
Noranda Metallurgy Inc., http://www.noranda.com
Louis Padnos Iron & Metal Co., http://www.macatawa.org/~padnos
Reynolds Metals Co., http://www.rmc.com
Processing Equipment Dealers/Industry Consultants
Air Products and Chemicals Inc., http://www.airproducts.com
Asoma Instruments Inc., http://www.industry.net/asoma
Tony Branch Associates, http://www.tecweb.com/tba/branch.htm
John Brown Plastics Machinery Group, http://www.john-brown-plastics.com
Cumberland and Recycling Systems, http://www.cumberland-plastics.com
Beringer, http://www.beringer-plastics.com
EPCO, http://www.epco-reman.com
Caterpillar Inc., http://www.CAT.com
Columbus McKinnon Corp., http://www.industry.net/cm
W.W. Grainger Inc., http://www.grainger.com
Intersource Recovery Systems Inc., http://www.thomasregister.com/intersource
Alfred Kärcher Inc., http://www.Karcher.com/akus
RMT Inc., http://www. execpc.com/~rmt/
Recycling Insights, http://www.ids.net/cpm
Alan Ross Machinery Corp., http://www.rossmach.com
Roy F. Weston Inc., http://rfweston.com
Trade Associations/Technical Societies
ASM International, http://www.asm-intl.org
Aluminum Association, http://www.aluminum.org,
Aluminum Extruders Council, http://www.aec.org,
American Iron and Steel Institute, http://www.steel.org
American Plastics Council, http://www.plasticsresource.com
Canadian Association of Recycling Industries, http://strategis.ic.gc.ca:5580/T651 (user name: “cari guest”; password: “shaw”)
Copper Development Association and International Copper Association, http://www.copper.org
Corrugated Packaging Council, http://www.loa.com/corrugated
Glass Packaging Institute, http://www.gpi.org
Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, http://www.isri.org
International Council on Metals and the Environment, http://www.icme.com,
Iron & Steel Society, http://www.issource.org
TAPPI, http://www.tappi.org
Publications and Publishers
American Metal Market, http://www.amm.com
Metal Bulletin, http://www.metbul.com/metbul/mbhome.html
Plastics News, http://www.plasticsnews.com
Recycling Laws International, http://www.raymond.com/recycle/
Wall Street Journal, http://www.wsj.com
Government Organizations
Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service, http://www.drms.dla.mil/amm.html
European Environment Agency, http://www.eea.dk
Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov
Recycling Business Assistance Center, http://owr.ehnr.state.nc.us/rbac1.htm
Recycling Council of Ontario, http://www.web.apc.org/rco
Small Business Administration, http://www.sbaonline.sba.gov
Thomas: Legislative Information on the Internet, http://thomas.loc.gov
U.S. Geological Service Iron and Steel Scrap Home Page, http://minerals.er.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/iron_&_steel_scrap/stat
The White House, http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/Welcome.
Miscellaneous
Chicago Board of Trade, http://www.cbot.com
Copper and Brass Sales Inc., http://www.copperandbrass.com
Corrugated Container Page, http://moose.erie.net/~santry/corr.html
Eastern Alloys Inc., http://www.eazall.com
EnviroWeb, http://envirolink.org
Europe’s Recycling Centre, http://www.tecweb.com/recycle/eurorec.htm
Global Recycling Network, http://www.grn.com
Intercontinental Metal Exchange, http://www.metalworld.com/metalworld/ime_menu.html
International Approval Services (ISO standards), http://www.gasweb.org/gasweb/ias/iso14000.htm
National Materials Exchange Network, http://www.earthcycle.com/g/p/__50f25565/nmen/about.html
New York Mercantile Exchange, http://www.nymex.com
Nickel on the Net, http://davinci2.csn.net/nickelalloy
PolySort (numerous plastics links), http://polysort.com
Pulp and Paper Jumplist, http://www.nlbbs.com/~dc001/paper/jumplist.html
Recycler’s World, http://recycle.net/recycle
Specialty Steel and Forge, http://www.steelforge.com
A Few Web Surfing Fundamentals
So you’d like to join the online world, but you’re feeling a bit stranded by all this talk of TCP/IP protocols and 32-bit platforms? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. The good news is that you don’t really have to know a lot about the technical aspects of the internet in order to benefit from it.
It’s like television: How many people who tune in the late-night rerun of “Hogan’s Heroes” actually understand raster scanning? All you need to know are some basic options:
E-mail providers. You can get universal e-mail through any number of sources, including phone companies, specialized service providers, and online services. As long as you’re going to get e-mail, though, you may want to choose an option that gives you full internet browsing capability; the cost is basically the same.
Online services. These can be viewed as private mini-internets: closed, online systems that can only be accessed by members. The largest are CompuServe and America Online, both of which offer a wealth of information, a variety of forums, and access to the internet at large. These services may be your best option if your online diet is rather simple—e-mail, weather, and news—for which you can expect to pay in the range of $10 per month (more if you spend time surfing the internet).
Internet service providers. These companies maintain powerful computers that serve as your gateway to the internet. For a monthly fee of anywhere from $20 to $100, you get practically unlimited access to the internet. For the same fee, many higher-end service providers will throw in the design and maintenance of a home page for your business.
Hardware requirements. All you really need is a computer and a modem. Unless you don’t mind waiting all day for web sites to make their way onto your screen, however, at a bare minimum you’ll probably want to be using a 14.4 modem working on a 386 processor with 16 MB of memory if you’re the PC type or a Mac System 7 if Apple’s more your style. Having a video memory of at least 2 MB will also speed things along and help you get cruisin’. •
More and more recyclers are finding the internet to be a useful tool for communicating and collecting information from all over the world.