Expert: Companies Must Take Long View

By: Jim Johnson
Waste and Recycling News
November 14, 2011

Sustainability is not always sustainable.

As vice president of national sales for Greenstar Recycling, Tim Herman knows all about balancing stewardship with the cost of recycling.

And the economics of recycling will change over time, he said       at the Corporate Recycling & Waste Conference in Orlando, Fla., earlier this fall.

To help make a corporate recycling program successful, he said, a company needs to commit to the effort.  For the long haul.

"The problem is if you dabble in it," he said. "The economics don't work very well if you are a dabbler."

He pointed to the recycling market that crashed three years ago as the economy hit the skids. But some commodities recently have enjoyed all-time highs. And who knows what the markets will be like in three more years?

That's why companies need to take the long view when it comes to recycling and make it part of their core mission to achieve success.

Houston-based Greenstar, which operates material recovery facilities in several states, encourages companies “not to make big decisions on program development based on market highs and market lows,” he said, but instead take a view of average prices over time.

Companies that make recycling part of a corporate culture – and not something that local divisions can elect to participate in or not – have a greater change of success.

Views on waste and recycling in corporate America have changed over time, Herman said during a presentation at the conference co-organized by Waste & Recycling News and Republic Services Inc.

“The discussion has changed largely from the generators point of view,” he said. “It’s something that’s affected the integrated waste industry as a whole. My customers are seeing this material differently than they have seen it in the past.”

Instead of being waste that must be managed, the materials are now being seen by many as having value.

While determining the ultimate value of a recycling program, companies need to not only consider the cost of having an outside company take the material, but also the internal costs of having their own employees handling the material.

“It’s not simply what the trash hauler is billing you,” he said.

He said he knows of one company that’s decided to truck its polystyrene from Texas to California to find a market for the material because it has made a zero-waste commitment.

“If it’s economically viable on its own merit, then it’s sustainable,” Herman said. “If it’s propped up too much by corporate directives” or regulations “there will come a day where likely it won’t survive.”

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