Canadians Weigh New Standards

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

According to the most recent issue of 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, executive director of CARI, made a joint presentation earlier this month to the Gravimetric Standing Committee of Measurement Canada. 

According to Shaw, Benzakein drew on his 30 years of experience to explain “the nuts and bolts of implementing Section 62 in our industry.”

The difficulty for the retail segment of the industry, particularly ferrous dealers, is that buying smaller quantities from individuals and “peddlers” can entail using a larger scale to measure relatively small amounts of scrap.

CARI expressed the fear that some dealers would stop taking small peddler loads if Section 62 is enforced, resulting in materials going to landfills or farmers’ fields.

Agreement with U.S. standards, which use a 10 times, not 100 times, multiplying factor for ferrous scrap and a 50 times factor for other scrap, was one suggested solution.