Editor's Focus

ISRI wasn’t kidding.

They talked of the importance and significance of change -- in the marketplace, on the government affairs front, in the structure of the association and in the organization of their annual convention.

While recyclers are somewhat limited in the control that they can wield over economic and political forces, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries certainly delivered the goods at its annual convention in Las Vegas last month.

In the weeks prior to the conference, ISRI staff and board members told Recycling Today about the need for members at every level to step back and reassess the status quo. How are we doing? Why do we do business the way we do? Are we using technologies and resources to their full advantage? Are our efforts to interface with local, state and federal officials effective? Is there a better way to do any or all of these things?

We all ask ourselves these questions, for various different reasons. For ISRI, some of the soul searching was aimed at finding ways to make its membership happier -- give them more bang for their buck, as it were. The most visible way to do that was the annual convention.

Many weren’t sure what to expect, but most got more than they expected.

The venue may have been familiar, but there was plenty of new territory explored in the way of programming, scheduling, membership services and hospitality. Traffic through the exhibit hall was healthy, in the last days of the show as well as the first. Exhibitors were made an integral part of the event rather than an addition to it. The warmth and camaraderie that many industry veterans had lamented in recent years once again become part of the annual gathering.

All of this, in a time of strong market activity, spells renewed strength and optimism for the scrap recycling industry . Many of the world markets -- some sluggish and others erratic -- have stabilized at least to a level of manageability for commodity traders. Processors comfortable with lucrative domestic and international markets are ready to make those capital investments they had been pondering through the recent lean years.

For all of the criticism levelled at ISRI’s annual convention in this column a year ago, the association is to be commended for setting a precedent for continued solidarity and optimism among the scrap recycling industry. In the course of one week (after several months and long hours of planning, no doubt), the association managed to unite the sometimes dichotomous characteristics of the industry -- traditional values and progressive entrepreneurialism.

The result was, and is, a rekindling of the faith and commitment of the association’s membership.