Point of purchase: harvesting a clean grade of OCC often begins at retail locations - Baler Focus

Recycling Today, Feb, 2003 by Brian Taylor

According to Korney, at these facilities, "the merchandise gets unboxed and scanned and paperwork is done on it before the product goes back to a manufacturer. But the boxes are emptied and placed onto a conveyor, just like at the incoming distribution centers."

Korney says these centers, often run by sub-contractors to the retailers, have become more common in recent years.

NATIONAL REACH

As much as it ever has, retailing is a national industry, with large retail chains now dominating in the department, discount and pharmacy areas. Grocery chains are still largely regional, but usually reach a size of several dozen locations.

Such large companies are increasingly aware of the dollars to be saved (or made) by recycling components of their waste streams rather than disposing of them. "Recycling programs are usually established on the headquarters level for national retailers," says Szany. "Usually they have at least one person whose business it is to know that for "x" number of dollars of merchandise, there is going to be "x" number of tons and dollars of corrugated generated."

Adds Szany, "There is someone in any large chain retailer who is probably very astute in terms of pricing and in setting policies to react to that pricing." He notes reading that an executive from one Carolinas-based grocery chain boasted of fetching $7 million in revenues from the store's recycling program in one recent year.

"When corrugated is $100 per ton, you can have a lot of balers being purchased because the revenues can justify that," he notes. "But when market prices are low, you might have people charging to remove loads," he continues, making the recycling programs less of an emphasis with many retailers.

The retail chains may purchase their balers and make recycling arrangements nationally or regionally within the chain. "A company that tries to do everything out of its headquarters might work directly with a paper mill company," says Szany. "That mill company will then handle the logistics, often working through its own plants or with regional recyclers."

The end result is a sizable contingent of balers on the job at grocery stores, big box retailers and other store locations throughout North America, generating a steady stream of baled OCC and helping provide a reliable supply of recovered fiber for paper mills throughout the world.

GEARED FOR THE STOCK ROOM

Most baler makers offer smaller, vertical models that are designed to work at retail locations.

Marathon Equipment Co., Vernon, Ala., has focused some of its corporate energy on this niche by offering the StockRoom Baler.

The StockRoom model stands just six-and-a-half feet tall and slightly less than three feet deep, giving it the sought-after "small footprint."

According to the company's Web site, Marathon has been successful in placing the models nationwide at one retailer with "hundreds of outlets."

Marathon says the placement of the balers will "help these stores control the high volume of cardboard they generate as well as provide income from recycling the 200 to 400-pound bales."