The Steel Recycling Institute (SRI), a business unit of the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI), Washington, D.C., as announced that since the formation of the organization 25 years ago, more than 1 billion tons of steel have been recycled by steelmakers in North America.


SRI was commissioned by the North American steel industry in 1988 to develop an infrastructure for the recycling of steel cans and serve as a primary information and technical resource. By 1993, SRI’s focus expanded beyond steel cans to promote the recycling of all steel products.

"For a quarter century, SRI has been the local face of the steel industry, providing advocacy, information and assistance in facilitating increases in the recycling of major steel products, including cans, cars, appliances and construction materials,” says Gregory Crawford, SRI executive director.

The SRI says the overall recycling rate for steel was 88 percent with nearly 84 million tons of steel recycled in 2012. This included the more than 1.3 million tons of tin plate steel, which were recycled at a rate of 72 percent, the highest among packaging materials. More than 16.3 million tons of automotive scrap were recycled at a rate of 92.5 percent in 2012.

Other rates, including appliance and construction products are based on industry estimates of retail and scrap collections, including the more than 2.7 million tons of appliance steel recycled in 2012 at an estimated 90 percent. Also, each year, based on construction and demolition industry estimates, about 98 percent of out-of-service construction plates and beams are recycled and 70 percent of rebar and other structural steel are captured for recycling through demolition and disassembly.

“The steel industry’s internationally recognized energy efficiency, coupled with the recycling rate that is the highest of any material, proves our commitment to sustainability and resource conservation,” says Thomas Gibson, president and CEO of AISI. “For 25 years, steel’s recycling successes have been spearheaded by the SRI and we look forward to another quarter century, where steel leads social, economic and environmental advances.”

The commitment to collect and recycle steel has been inherent to steelmaking for nearly as long as steel has been made in North America. This is reflected through external scrap collection for recycling and by extensive recycling of byproducts of the steelmaking process.

“Our company, along with the entire steel industry, has a long history in recycling steel. We recycle many of our byproducts such as slag and blast furnace gas and are committed to continue to look for additional recycling opportunities,” says Ronald Kostyo, vice president and general manager of Severstal Dearborn.

Pratt Industries Inc., Conyers, Ga., has announced plans to build a recycled-content paperboard mill in Valparaiso, Ind., adjacent to the company’s existing box plant. The official announcement follows reports over the past year that Pratt was considering building another board mill in the Midwest. The mill most recently completed by the company opened in Louisiana in 2009.

The Valparaiso facility, to go under the name Pratt Paper (Indiana) LLC, is expected to be completed by July 2015 will cost the company around $260 million. The mill will occupy a new 250,000 square-foot plant and will include a wastewater pre-treatment facility and road improvements. When fully operational the facility will be able to produce 360,000 tons of recycled-content board per year.

“This new facility will allow us to better service the needs of our expanding customer base, not only in the Midwest, but throughout the United States,” says Anthony Pratt, owner and chairman of Pratt. “Indiana is a perfect fit for us. We’ve been a part of the business community here for many years now and we know there is a skilled, reliable workforce available to us.”

The Indiana Economic Development Corp. (IEDC) has offered Pratt Paper LLC up to $1.2 million in conditional tax credits and up to $200,000 in training grants based on the number of Indiana residents the company hires. Also assisting in the project will be the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority, which will support the project through its Deal Closing Fund. Energy company NIPSCO (Northern Indiana Public Service Co.) also has offered Pratt an estimated $15 million in additional energy and infrastructure incentives.

The City of Valparaiso offered tax abatement and tax increment financing as well as conduit financing through $200 million in industrial revenue bonds for the facility and equipment.

Founded in 1987, Pratt bills itself as the world’s largest privately held company to produce all of its paper and packaging from 100 percent recycled material. The company produces 1.15 million tons of recycled-content paper each year.

Unlimited Recycling Resources (URR), Ontario, Calif., has announced the availability of the G-Baler line of recycling and process balers for the North American market.

Manufactured by the Taiwan-based company Godswill Paper Machinery Co., G-Balers are operating in 72 nations at more than 3,000 installations, according to URR. The G-Baler line runs from the “lay-down” style low-production machines to fully automated extrusion balers that bale up to 30 tons of OCC (old corrugated containers) per hour.

“The G-Baler line is truly extraordinary,” says URR co-founder Steve Colton. “I’ve been selling and servicing balers for more than 30 years. What’s unique about the G-Baler line is that processors get premium quality with features found only on the industry’s most expensive European models.”

“From the Denison pumps and Vickers hydraulics to the Siemens electronics and Mitsubishi PLCs (programmable logic controllers), these are impressive machines,” Dan Gregory, URR co-founder and engineering director, adds. “When you look at the frame construction, platen rollers and the wide range of premium features that enhance the performance, production and longevity of these machines, you simply can’t help but be impressed.”

Founded in 1987, Godswill is a producer of specialty machinery for the boxboard, paper converting and recycling industries.

URR has more than 40 years of experience in the recycling and paper converting industries. URR also offers customers local support and is the exclusive North American agent for Strautmann-Umwelt Technik of Glandorf, German, Godswill and other premium machinery.

Nat Egosi, president of RRT Design and Construction, will be one of the panelists at the upcoming Paper Recycling Conference & Trade Show, set for Oct. 16-18 in Chicago. The session, "Making MRFs Work," also features speakers Sean Duffy, president/CEO of ReCommunity; and Tom Outerbridge, general manager of Sims Metal Management. 

To learn more about the conference, visit http://americas.paperrecyclingconference.com/.

In advance of his presentation, Egosi shares some thoughts on the paper recycling industry. 

Recycling Today (RT): Consolidation has been a big factor for the recycling industry. Can you explain the impact this trend has had on the recycling industry?

Nat Egosi (NE): Mergers and acquisitions have been accomplished primarily with publicly traded companies. What drives them? They want to or need to maintain or increase shareholder values. On the shareholder value side, consolidators are considering revenue and income and they also are considering how to manage their risk. They are looking to offset any variables that are occurring in their businesses. They want to leverage all the assets they already own, whether contracts, landfills, transfer stations and other recycling facilities, as well as their customer accounts.

We see the clear direction in the industry that consolidation leads to greater value and provides these companies with more purchasing power with everything they are doing; more marketing power in terms of how they approach the customers; and marketing power on how they sell their recyclables and where they put their recyclables into the market.

They provide job opportunities and perhaps one of the largest drivers is the possibility for lower operating costs as recycling values fluctuate. It helps communities and companies to achieve diversion costs.

What this means for the industry is we want them to succeed. It is their activities and business that are fueling our industry. They are behind a lot of what is happening. That big factor is the driver for the continued strengthening in the future of our industry.

RT: A trend for MRFs has been to maximize throughput. What does this do for quality?

NE: It isn’t a recent trend. It has always been and will always continue to be. We are in the business of the volume paradox. The more material we process the lower the cost per unit it is to process. So, this trend has and will continue to move forward. But the essence of the question is what it does to quality. There is an expression that ‘haste makes waste.’ In many of these cases facilities operate over throughput levels exceeding what the facility can actually do. Consequently, they are producing lower grade product.

Why are they doing it? Part of the reason is the expectation levels set by the equipment manufacturers, designers and promoters of what a facility can do. The benchmark for the facility has been that bigger is better. Therefore, one might perhaps overstate the capacity of the facility and project a higher level of performance as a goal, which ensures everyone is working hard as they can to reach the goal. If the goal is too high, the consequence is the output of the facility may result in product of lower grade or not acceptable quality.

There is an ongoing correction that is going on in the industry in parallel with that maximizing throughput. ‘Are we overrunning our facilities? Are we putting too much material through our facilities?’

RT: One grade originally predominant was ONP (old newspapers). It has been declining lately. Where do you see ONP heading in the future? And are there any materials that can supplement?

NE: What we see is ONP in the future is a significant reduction in the demand for the purchase of newsprint, which reduces the production of newsprint, thus a decline in ONP. There is a continuous reduction in availability of ONP as a paper grade. It will be that way. It has been projected that way for many, many years.

What recyclers can do to replace ONP has been largely discussed and people talking about adding more grades of plastics, maybe textiles, more metals, adding aseptic containers. All those ideas have merit, whether or not ONP was shrinking as a commodity. However, if you add all those items it won’t come close to offsetting the reduction in ONP. What we see happening for recyclers is they are diversifying their business to rebrand their MRF to handle a completely different stream, in some cases a commercial stream and other items that are becoming a big trend in our industry.

RT: Are there any overarching trends driving the recycling markets today?

NE: First, I will say we are seeing through the consolidation in the private sector that companies consolidating and centralizing smaller facilities to feed larger facilities. Larger facilities are closing down smaller facilities and trucking material to larger facilities.

That trend is made possible by the fact that the public sector has greatly reduced its interest and activity in owning and operating MRFs. In the late '80s and early '90s, the public sector was really interested in owning the MRFs. Now, it is all on the private side and that trend, in combination with the private companies' mission for shareholder value, is all about making these MRFs become super MRFs. It is multi-material, more than just containers and paper. They’re bringing in materials like C&D, mixed waste and organics. From a trending point of view they have broadened to include many other things and not just residential curbside recyclables.

It is exciting for us in regards to the trends but also very challenging. Back in the day there were a narrow group of people covering the entire industry with great success. Today, you need a variety of experts and expertise and different types of equipment suppliers and even different types of owners and operators running different kinds of facilities that all integrate the entire industry.

More information on the Paper Recycling Conference is available at http://americas.paperrecyclingconference.com.