CARI Membership Surpasses 200

The Canadian Association of Recycling Industries (CARI) has surpassed a membership level of 200 companies, perhaps for the first time in its history, according to executive director Len Shaw.

The Ajax, Ontario-based association offers a number of services to member companies that recycle a variety of materials, including metals, paper, plastics, glass and rubber.

Shaw notes that metals recycling remains the core interest of most CARI members, and that the association has been able to grow even during the slump that afflicted the metals industry in the late ‘90s and the early part of this decade. “In 2003, CARI achieved a membership retention rate of 91 percent and then grew by 21 percent,” he comments.

According to Shaw, CARI’s success is due to restructuring members’s dues and focusing on core association business.  “Two years ago the number and cost of membership categories was reduced,” he notes. “About 60 percent of the members saw a reduction in dues.”

CARI also eliminated its magazine Infinity and concentrated on developing its property and casualty insurance program and its relationship with the NASCO-Op purchasing cooperative, based in New Philadelphia, Ohio. And, “CARI continues to lobby on behalf of the industry and offers networking events, such as the fall Consumer’s Night in Toronto,” adds Shaw.

On the government relations and communications side, “CARI develops promotional and educational materials that explain the industry and its significance in order to develop a better understanding of the value of recycling to the Canadian society and economy,” Shaw remarks.