The recycling phenomenon and environmental regulations - New Mexico

New Mexico Business Journal, July, 1990 by Don Clark

The Recycling Phenomenon and Environmental Regulations

Recycling

RECYCLING, NEW MEXICO STYLE, is a panacea solution to solid waste disposal in rapidly filling landfills with no ready local market.

All New Mexico recycleables must be shipped to out-of-state markets.

Poll after poll shows definitely heightened public awareness; consistently 90 percent answer they are recycling and buying recycled packaging, even though the best data available shows the optimum recycling rate is about 60 percent.

Recycling is separation, collection, concentration of throw-away materials to return materials to the resource stream after shipping and marketing.

In fact and in priciple, recycling works to help reduce landfill space and to lessen pressures on existing resources. However, all too often, recycling ends up costing more than it saves.

It must make a profit or private enterprise will not do it, no matter who it is intended to help. If it does not make a profit, recycling will become another public service heavily subsidized by state and local governments, you, Mr. Taxpayer.

Even though it seems low priority, we must all pay close attention to Recycling, New Mexico Style, because events nationally in solid waste disposal could bury us in others' garbage.

Landfills in the east are closing and those millions of people think it would be great to ship solid waste to the wide open spaces of New Mexico. After all, fewer than 2 million people live in New Mexico.

So let's look at Recycling, New Mexico Style.

Collection is the first process in recycling. To be meaningful, it must become a daily habit. Many businesses lay aside their recycleables, metals, plastic, glass, paper and cardboard, to reduce their refuse collection bill.

Rio Rancho's Intel is the most dramatic example of a reduced bill through a company-wide recycling effort.

Collection is also daily roadside collection, salvage buying at Los Alamos and Sandia Labs, curbside programs, local charity efforts, and scavenging by "recycling subcontractors," the new bureaucratic term for rag-pickers.

Collection is a change from present daily dumping and handling techniques to supply a daily flow to the recycling centers.

Separation is the next phase, also requiring a change in daily habits. Metals are the most lucrative of recycleables, but must be isolated for maximum return. Steel is currently a cent a pound, aluminum 20 cents to 45 cents; and copper 50 cents to 90 cents. If the material is all mixed up, the recycling centers only pay the steel rate. Glass must be separated by color and if paper is not categorized, it is just trash.

Concentration requires enough material for feasible handling. Most recycling centers will pick up your material if you have enough for a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Pay rates are adjusted by concentration. One pound of aluminum pays only 20 cents, but 1,000 pounds commands 42 cents, more than double the one-pound rate.

Shipping is New Mexico's greatest recycling problem.

Even after your materials reach the local market, all New Mexico materials must be shipped to out-of-state markets. Most aluminum cans are melted at the giant Reynolds complex in Lister Hill, Alabama. Paper goes to Snowflake, Arizona, and, incredibly, sometimes to Japan. Tucson and Dallas take our plastics; glass goes to Waco, Texas; and steel to El Paso.

Of these materials, only plastics could be feasibly processed in New Mexico, due to its handling difficulties and the other materials require huge expenditures in smokestack industries, unacceptable to our environmentalists.

However, to be profitable, our unbuilt plastic plant would have to accept plastic from Utah and Colorado. An acceptable product would then have to be made from the material, but all subject to local zoning and the very environmentalists urging us to recycle.

Marketing is bottom line in recycling.

Everyone wants to get paid, but strange events can change the market daily. Announcement of a charity campaign can drive the target commodity price down. Japanese buyers, intent on locating a bargain, can double the price. With so many well-intentioned people of late, most prices have fallen at recycling centers, called in the business "price fluctuation due to recycling consciousness."

Another marketing problem in New Mexico: even though we enjoy one of the highest recycling rates per capita, our best effort can supply a processing plant for only two days.

Starting a recycling center from scratch with little scratch is the usual norm.

Rob Witt of Capital Recycling in Santa Fe started in 1977 after managing a local butane business.

He wanted to go into his own business and after cleaning up a friend's yard, discovered value in discards. His next big break came when he went to buy an old boiler and the owners asked him if he would do the hauling for only $500.

In 1986, Witt took over the Beverage Industry Recycling Center on Cook Lane and business increased dramatically. Now he has nine employees and over a million dollars in annual sales.

Sandia Metals of Albuquerque came from Scott Steinberg's father operating a scrap metal yard in 1963. Walt Scarticcini joined Scott in 1986 to form Sandia Metals. Aggressive location placements coupled with sound daily turnover pushed Sandia Metals to $3 million gross with 14 employees.