Editor's Focus - The Starting Gun

During the third quarter of the year, those who manage businesses must often mentally turn the calendar ahead several months as they are asked to plan and budget for the upcoming year.

Among the 2008-related tasks underway at the Recycling Today Media Group is planning for the June Recycling Today Events conferences, scheduled for June 22-24 at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare in Rosemont, Ill.

The three colocated events (the Paper Recycling Conference, Recycling Today’s Plastics Recycling Conference and the Electronics Recycling Conference) bring together three different segments of the recycling industry with a variety of goals in mind.

Networking is always a priority for attendees. Creating networking opportunities is thus a goal for conference planners.

Offering an exhibit hall that benefits prospective buyers and sellers is another priority. Planning this properly ideally means a profitable experience for exhibitors and a worthwhile shopping trip for attendees.

For Recycling Today, which bills itself as "The Business Magazine for Recycling Professionals," creating a three-day forum focusing on commerce is a critical element in planning for our June conferences, including our programming. Each year the Recycling Today staff seeks opinions from our readers and advertisers as to what factors they see affecting the recycling markets now and in the future.

Those of you receiving this magazine and reading this column are in the best position of anyone to gauge how conditions are changing for the materials you trade and within the industry you serve.

When it comes to collecting, processing and trading paper, plastic and other recyclable materials, what is changing the way you do business? Are market forces or new competitive threats creating new challenges? What balance-sheet aspects of the business are causing you sleepless nights?

Additionally, where are you seeing new opportunities? Are there materials you are being asked to handle that used to be a nuisance but that now have a market? Are segments of the industrial, commercial office place or residential markets more receptive to recycling now than in the recent past?

If any of these questions has caused you to declare a quick answer, we’d like to hear from you. As we plan our conference session topics and our editorial content for 2008, your comments are welcome.

If you have an answer to any of the questions above that you’d like to pass along, please write me at btaylor@gie.net or call me at (800) 456-0707. You may well see your idea be a topic of discussion when we gather in Chicago next June.