Canadians weigh new standards - Scrap Industry News - Measurement Canada's regulation of minimum loads on commercial scales - Brief Article

Recycling Today, Dec, 2002

The Canadian Association of Recycling Industries (CARI), Ajax, Ontario, has expressed concern to government agency Measurement Canada over minimum loads to be measured on commercial scales.

According to The Pulse, CARI's newsletter, Section 62 of the Specifications Relating to Non-Automatic Weighing Devices (1998) holds that "the minimum load to be weighed on a scale must be no less that 100 times the `verification scale interval' (i.e. graduation interval). In other words a scale with 20-pound graduations may only be used to measure a load of 2,000 pounds or more."

According to CARI, Section 62 of the specifications was adopted in 1998 after consultation with scale manufacturers, end user groups and Measurement Canada, although CARI and specific scrap dealers were not consulted. The May 2002 notification to enforce this section has resulted in the industry and CARI notifying Measurement Canada of its objections.

Richard Benzakein, president of Metaux and Depot, a scrap recycling company in Montreal, and Len Shaw, CARI executive director, addressed the Gravimetric Standing Committee of Measurement Canada in November.

The difficulty for ferrous dealers is that buying from individuals and "peddlers" can entail using a larger scale to measure relatively small amounts of scrap.

U.S. standards, which use a 10 times multiplying factor for ferrous scrap and a 50 times factor for other scrap, was one suggested solution.

The committee is expected to discuss this concern during November and December, according to CARI.